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Alexander Murphy's Home for Wayward Celebrities
Lucy Faas was lonely, though she didn’t realize it before coming to stay at Alexander Murphy’s Montecito home. She just thought she was leaving her suburban hermitage for a fresh place where she could work on the comeback for her abandoned music career; she never expected to open up about her rape at fourteen whose songwriting therapy propelled her into a music career, or that she would be joining an assemblage of celebrities hiding from a bored populace who would include her in their eccentric family; nor that she would be the one to solve the mystery of the home and its enigmatic host; and it was absolutely unthinkable that she would fall in love, and then learn the secret that could bring this celebrity halfway house to a shameful end.
Incorporating Lucy’s songwriting, architecture-themed articles, and sections of pure dramatic dialogue into its seriocomic narrative, and with a cast of celebrities alternately inspired and imagined, Alexander Murphy’s Home for Wayward Celebrities is the kind of literary novel that will appeal to a mainstream celebrity-hungry readership.
Incorporating Lucy’s songwriting, architecture-themed articles, and sections of pure dramatic dialogue into its seriocomic narrative, and with a cast of celebrities alternately inspired and imagined, Alexander Murphy’s Home for Wayward Celebrities is the kind of literary novel that will appeal to a mainstream celebrity-hungry readership.
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First published September 5, 2011
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About the author
Josh Karaczewski
6 books10 followersJosh Karaczewski has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area his whole life - save for a year studying architecture in Boston.
He majored in Art, taking English classes for fun.
He recently moved back to teaching High School English full time after a couple years substitute teaching, which is better on the bank account, but terrible for writing. He is also a partner in his family candy business, Chastity Chocolates (www.chastitychocolates.com), specializing in high quality small batch confections and baked goods.
He has a fabulous marriage that has produced three fabulous children.
He enjoys reading, writing, art, film, and video games.
Visitors to his blog will find coupon codes, as well as extended book reviews, news, and other information useless and otherwise.
He majored in Art, taking English classes for fun.
He recently moved back to teaching High School English full time after a couple years substitute teaching, which is better on the bank account, but terrible for writing. He is also a partner in his family candy business, Chastity Chocolates (www.chastitychocolates.com), specializing in high quality small batch confections and baked goods.
He has a fabulous marriage that has produced three fabulous children.
He enjoys reading, writing, art, film, and video games.
Visitors to his blog will find coupon codes, as well as extended book reviews, news, and other information useless and otherwise.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 29, 2012
I concede off the top to getting only 40% through the book before calling it a day.
Author Josh Karaczewski displays occasional moments of clever metaphor and compelling turn-of-phrase, but they are too few and far between in this utter wreck of a novel.
Alternately a rambling narrative and an exercise in literary experimentation, it succeeds at neither, feeling ponderously pretentious in its use of eighteen-syllable dialogue while at the same time capturing some of the worst traits of bad fiction: long, overwrought paragraphs of unnecessary exposition and description; voiceless, charmless characters; conversations that are unrelentingly unrealistic.
This lack of care extends to the proofreading (most of us indies are awful on that front) and the actual sentence structure, which on at least one occasion runs away from the author and ceases to even make sense. On numerous other occasions it features more than one tense in the same clause, which is terribly awkward.
The lead character is a songwriter who became such due to a childhood rape that is described in brutally artificial terms; as a victim of childhood sex assault myself, it was difficult to read such an absence of true empathy for how a person is feeling in that moment, its desire to use stylistic interpretation instead of raw pain.
All of this pretense and playful disrespect for the craft of writing would be forgivable with a great story at the book's heart, or even a mildly entertaining one, but there just isn't.
This books is praying for direction and an editor. The plotting is sparse at best, and it has the feel of being made up as the author went along, a flight of fancy.
But people shouldn't have to wade through hundreds of pages of a flight of fancy, and I'm certainly not going to.
It's obvious from the occasional moment of lucid consideration and delicate prose that the author is capable of so much more than this.
Author Josh Karaczewski displays occasional moments of clever metaphor and compelling turn-of-phrase, but they are too few and far between in this utter wreck of a novel.
Alternately a rambling narrative and an exercise in literary experimentation, it succeeds at neither, feeling ponderously pretentious in its use of eighteen-syllable dialogue while at the same time capturing some of the worst traits of bad fiction: long, overwrought paragraphs of unnecessary exposition and description; voiceless, charmless characters; conversations that are unrelentingly unrealistic.
This lack of care extends to the proofreading (most of us indies are awful on that front) and the actual sentence structure, which on at least one occasion runs away from the author and ceases to even make sense. On numerous other occasions it features more than one tense in the same clause, which is terribly awkward.
The lead character is a songwriter who became such due to a childhood rape that is described in brutally artificial terms; as a victim of childhood sex assault myself, it was difficult to read such an absence of true empathy for how a person is feeling in that moment, its desire to use stylistic interpretation instead of raw pain.
All of this pretense and playful disrespect for the craft of writing would be forgivable with a great story at the book's heart, or even a mildly entertaining one, but there just isn't.
This books is praying for direction and an editor. The plotting is sparse at best, and it has the feel of being made up as the author went along, a flight of fancy.
But people shouldn't have to wade through hundreds of pages of a flight of fancy, and I'm certainly not going to.
It's obvious from the occasional moment of lucid consideration and delicate prose that the author is capable of so much more than this.
July 29, 2013
In this witty, ambitious novel of ideas, Josh Karaczewski anatomizes a culture of celebrity that’s become predatory and inhumane. Alexander Murphy is an enigmatic tycoon who runs an exclusive resort for celebrities, a haven from scandal-stalkers and unwholesome media scrutiny. Lucy Faas is one of his residents, a singer-songwriter ready to emerge from retirement. She doesn’t know what’s worse: the way she became defined by the childhood assault that she dealt with in her songs, or the intrusion and coercion she had to suffer at the hands of her following, family, and the press. The supporting cast is a dazzling array of artists, punk rockers, directors, and actors traumatized by our culture’s need to appropriate the private lives of the famous.
This is no ordinary novel. The plot, such as it is, merely serves as scaffolding for probing examinations of sex, religion, fame, and even the notion of storytelling itself. The freewheeling narration here is self-conscious to the point of including a character named Josh Karaczewski, who at one point lectures the characters on the metaphorical nature of the current scene. Readers who love postmodern trickery and creative narration will delight in Karaczewsi’s wit.
The play of ideas in this book is matched by the author’s verbal skill. Karaczewski is a real word wizard and will amaze the reader with the originality of his word choices. He describes an ornate staircase as “salaaming” the floor at its base; he makes you hear the “jilted clink of ice” in an empty glass.
Society at large threatens Murphy’s celebrity haven, though, along with the famous folks’ own insecurities. Will some scandal-rag shutterbug manage to penetrate Murphy’s inner sanctum, or does Alexander have even more tricks up his sleeve? Will Lucy end up back in the humiliating pop music grind, or will she retake the stage on her own terms? This is a rewarding work from a uniquely talented author.
This is no ordinary novel. The plot, such as it is, merely serves as scaffolding for probing examinations of sex, religion, fame, and even the notion of storytelling itself. The freewheeling narration here is self-conscious to the point of including a character named Josh Karaczewski, who at one point lectures the characters on the metaphorical nature of the current scene. Readers who love postmodern trickery and creative narration will delight in Karaczewsi’s wit.
The play of ideas in this book is matched by the author’s verbal skill. Karaczewski is a real word wizard and will amaze the reader with the originality of his word choices. He describes an ornate staircase as “salaaming” the floor at its base; he makes you hear the “jilted clink of ice” in an empty glass.
Society at large threatens Murphy’s celebrity haven, though, along with the famous folks’ own insecurities. Will some scandal-rag shutterbug manage to penetrate Murphy’s inner sanctum, or does Alexander have even more tricks up his sleeve? Will Lucy end up back in the humiliating pop music grind, or will she retake the stage on her own terms? This is a rewarding work from a uniquely talented author.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews