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    Wit's End
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    Wit's End
    Unavailable
    Wit's End
    Audiobook8 hours

    Wit's End

    Written by Karen Joy Fowler

    Narrated by Bernadette Dunne

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "[A] delightful and eccentric new tale"(The Boston Globe) from the author of the runaway bestseller The Jane Austen Book Club

    In Karen Joy Fowler's newest novel, the bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club once again delivers top-notch storytelling, creating characters both oddball and endearing in a voice that is utterly and memorably her own. Wit's End is a clever, playful novel about finally allowing oneself to grow up-with a dash of mystery thrown in.

    At loose ends and weary from her recent losses-the deaths of an inventive if at times irritating father and her beloved brother-Rima Lansill comes to Wit's End, the home of her legendary godmother, bestselling mystery writer Addison Early, to regroup...and in search of answers. For starters, why did Addison name one of her characters-a murderer-after Rima's father? But Addison is secretive and feisty, so consumed with protecting her famous fictional detective, Maxwell Lane, from the vagaries of the Internet that-rumor has it- she has writer's block. As one woman searches for truth, the other struggles to control the reality of her fiction.

    Rima soon becomes enmeshed in Addison's household of eccentrics: a formerly alcoholic cook and her irksome son, two quirky dog-walkers, a mysterious stalker, the tiny characters that populate Addison's dollhouse crime-scene replicas, and even Maxwell Lane himself. But, wrapped up in a mystery that may or may not be of her own creation, Rima discovers to her surprise that the ultimate solution to this puzzle is the new family she has found at the house called Wit's End.

    Playfully exploring the blurred boundaries between reality and virtual reality, fiction and fact, Karen Joy Fowler subverts the whodunit and gives us a thoroughly modern meta-mystery with wit, warmth, and heart.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 1, 2008
    ISBN9781436211390
    Unavailable
    Wit's End
    Author

    Karen Joy Fowler

    Well known in the mainstream for her New York Times bestseller, The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler is a well-respected and considerable force in SF and Fantasy as well. She is a two-time winner of the Nebula and World Fantasy awards, and cofounder of the Tiptree Award, given for works dealing with the politics of sex and gender.

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    Reviews for Wit's End

    3/5

    112 ratings10 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I've loved Karen Joy Fowler's books in the past, so I was mystified by this one. It has all the elements of a good story: a young woman (Rima, our heroine) who has just lost her father and who has questions about his past; an older woman who happens to be Rima's godmother as well as being a reclusive mystery writer, who may have the answers to some of Rima's questions; a box of old letters; a connection to a cult; some old unsolved crimes; even a wacky fan or two. But somehow the story never gels. The dead brother subplot feels forced; characterizing Rima's loss of her family as just more things she loses seems flippant and almost crass; and the whole fans-taking-over-your-fictional-characters never really gets off the ground (or maybe it just never really gets interesting). I was left wondering where the Karen Joy Fowler of Sarah Canary and Artificial Things fame had gone.
    • 2/5
      I really liked The Jane Austen Book Club and I hoped that the author followed a similar thread in telling this story. She didn't. I read the whole thing, but I don't feel like this book is actually about anything. The plot plods along, but nothing really happens. The characters are not very sympathetic and I struggled to care what happened to them. I think this could have been told better in a series of short stories/essays, or as a novella. It just kept dragging on and on.
    • 3/5
      It's like she took the first couple chapters for an interesting story, stretched them out to book length, and then stopped. Everything up to the final chapter was character development. Charismatic enough characters, but clearly an unnecessary amount. It really only makes sense if it's the start of a series, but it doesn't seem to be. The writing was fine. And the discussion of fan communities was what drew me to it. But nothing actually happened.
    • 3/5
      went to a concert in the late sixties to see a Canadian singing duo called Ian and Sylvia. One of their original songs, “Four Strong Winds,” had been high on the charts a few years before. When they started this song, the audience began to sing it, and when Ian and Sylvia Tyson tried to change the words in the third verse, they were drowned out by the crowd’s singing of the lyrics that had been on the record. Just whose song was it, I wondered at the time.This question of who really owns a creative project like a song or in this case a book’s characters, is taken up by Karen Joy Fowler in her 2008 mystery, Wit’s End. In this book, Rima Lansill, saddened and confused by the deaths of her mother, father, and younger brother, arrives at Wit’s End, the Santa Cruz shoreline house of her godmother, the mystery writer Addison Early. She comes for a kind of rest cure and stays to solve a mystery.The mystery is partly what the relationship was between Rima’s father and Addison, a relationship that would prompt Addison to put Rima’s father in one of her mysteries as a serial killer, complete with his real name. But there’s also a stalker who haunts the coast house and who may or may not be the same woman who writes fan letters to Addison’s fictional detective and who may or may not have grown up in a cult called the Holy City with the person who inspired the character of the detective. At the house called Wit’s End, Rima encounters a cast of eccentrics that includes Tilda the tattooed cook, her unpleasant son Martin, the dog walkers Scorch and Cody, and various strangers who have trouble distinguishing between fact and fiction. The detective in Addison’s books becomes a regular visitor in Rima’s dreams, and she finds herself drawn into an investigation that puts her in danger from those who have been deranged by their bizarre and violent past.Karen Joy Fowler has had several bestselling books, the most recent being The Jane Austen Book Club. She’s not really a mystery writer. What I mean by that is that her attention is always less with pacing Rima’s discoveries and clearly elucidating the mystery, always more with the developing new social order at Wit’s End, as well as whether and how Rima will fit into it. As she has shown from previous books, some of which combine historical and science fiction, she’s a little bit of a genre bender. But she kept me reading with a really ingratiating style that is often funny and never mistakes sarcasm for wit.
    • 3/5
      I really liked the concept of this book. Focusing on writers and fans of books and characters and how sometimes obsessions can be taken a little too far. There wasn't any major action in this story. No huge revelations or dramatic events. But the journey was so nicely done. I remember finishing the book not feeling any kind of connection to any of the characters but still managed to connect to the story at least. I had read Fowler before and knew everything would be a bit more subtle.
    • 3/5
      I'm not really sure what to think about this book. It is very well written, but the story is rather weak. It had a lot of potential but somehow the mystery just wasn't mysterious enough, at least to me. I did enjoy the quirky humor so if you are looking for something just a little unusual this book would be a good choice.
    • 3/5
      In Australia this book is published as The Case of the Imaginary Author and the cover is inspired by Cluedo pieces. I was expecting more of a cosy mystery than Fowler produces and given how much I had enjoyed The Jane Austen Book Club I was expecting to enjoy it more than I did. The problem with the novel is that the narrator is less than engaging: she can't make her mind up about whether to pursue the "mystery" of the novel and so we as readers can't make up our minds about whether to go along with her for the ride. It's a shame because the ideas that Fowler wants to engage us in are very interesting: the relationship between novelist and reader, between novelist and source material, even between author and medium of telling the story. She examines the mystery genre but one never feels that she loves it the way one felt that she loved Austen and so the passionless narrator creates the indifferent reader not quite the relationship between novelist and reader she would have hoped for,
    • 1/5
      I got through about 150 pages of this and had to put it down - I just couldn't get into it.
    • 3/5
      I was first introduced to Karen Joy Fowler's work six months ago when a friend gave me The Jane Austen Book Club. I have to say, I lapped that book up in less than twenty-four hours, even though I was initially thrown by the unidentified first-person narrator. After getting over that little hump, I swiftly fell in love with Fowler's writing. I think what impressed me the most was her uncanny knack for structure, her ability to craft a character's background without getting bogged down in detail, and her fresh, insightful witticisms. Needless to say, I was eagerly looking forward to her next book. Wit's End has all of those elements that make Fowler's writing a delight to read. However, while reading, I found my interest waning and wondered why. It didn't take me long to admit that, despite how much I might love Fowler's writing, a weak plot will still cause my mind to wander. In Fowler's story, Rima Lanisell arrives at her godmother's house (Wit's End) for respite after losing her mother, father and younger brother. Rima has a knack for losing things -- car keys, sunglasses, people. Now, she has come to Santa Cruz to find solace and finally meet her godmother -- famous mystery writer Addison Early. While fumbling through her pain, Rima searches for the truth behind Addison's relationship with Rima's father. This leads Rima into a bit of a mystery that she decides to solve, though rather half-heartedly at times. Wit's End is full of deliciously off-beat characters including two very funny, over-zealous dachshunds named Stanford and Berkeley. The writing is breezy and fun, but the plot falls flat mainly because Rima's character is too wishy-washy to keep the mystery aspects alive and interesting. All in all, Wit's End is worth reading for Fowler's unique style and humor, but don't expect to be riveted by the story itself.
    • 3/5
      Absolutely fabulous voice..........very thin plot. A mystery you really don't care about. A protagonist that is so depressed she depresses the reader. Only worth it for the writing.