The Outlook for Earthlings
by Joan Frank
Description
The Outlook for Earthlings traces an unusual, difficult friendship across a lifetime, between women of stunningly opposite natures. Melanie Taper is timid, compelled to obey and venerate authority. Yet in unguarded moments she demonstrates such deadly insight into human foibles as to suggest a strength that has, for dark reasons, deliberately hidden itself. Scarlet Rand, by contrast, is rash, willful, and impatient of reverence of any stripe. Scarlet is shocked by Mel's passive reserve; despite her obvious gifts, Mel is—bafflingly—self-erasing. Mel's saintliness maddens Scarlet—because finally and most troublingly, Scarlet disbelieves it. Their friendship suggests to each a final frontier, a saving sanctuary. Yet at its core, a pained impasse soon becomes evident: each woman takes a secret, moral offense at the other's inmost nature—and choices. Living out these differences—against awareness of the illness which is slowly destroying one of them—proves an ultimate challenge. In each, a reckoning must occur. The Outlook for Earthlings examines what women want, amid conflicting layers of need. It ponders beginnings, endings, and Virginia Woolf's declaration that good angels must be killed. It considers the limits of friendship—and of the act of witnessing. At its heart, it asks how we may finally measure a life—and who should do the measuring.
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Rights Information
Foreign, audio, and video rights available.
Endorsements
Praise for The Outlook for Earthlings
“Gorgeous, limpid prose exploring vast and nuanced constellations of human love.”
— Elizabeth Rosner, author of Survivor Cafe
“Line by line, The Outlook for Earthlings continually stunned me with its grace. In Frank’s hands, even everyday actions become beautiful. Captures both the agony of adolescence and the quieter disappointments of middle age with skill and insight.”
— Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
“The Outlook for Earthlings offers the gift of Joan Frank’s gorgeous, limpid prose exploring vast and nuanced constellations of human love. Frank’s characters gracefully reveal how choices made, accrue to shape and define our lives—yet how forgiveness may also allow us to transcend those very limitations.”
— Elizabeth Rosner, author of Survivor Cafe
“Joan Frank is an exquisite chronicler of the cracked and confused desires, wants—needs—of the human heart. Her people are survivors who (to echo one beautiful line) wear their stories on their faces. The Outlook for Earthlings is a devastating, and redemptive, contribution to her already excellent body of work.”
— Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown & Others
“I’m completely in love with The Outlook for Earthlings. It’s affected me so powerfully that I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone, or do anything but sit and reflect, and re-read passages here and there. Truly a beautiful, life-altering work of fiction.”
— Christina “Kit” Ward
“With great delicacy, Frank studies every detail of her protagonists’ lives. The lifelong friendship of Mel and Scarlet offers us a portrait of love whose intent is not to save or protect, but as an act of bearing witness.”
— Michael Sledge, author of The More I Owe You
“Rich in experience and delineation of contemporary relationships, vividly seen and described.”
— Joan London, author of The Golden Age
“With technicolor period details, intense reflections, and devastating acuity about women’s compromises in love, The Outlook for Earthlings is an elegant elegy.”
— Karen Rigby (Foreword Reviews, September / October 2020)
Reviews
Bob Wake, Cambridge Book Review
Joan Frank has a painter’s eye for the natural world. (“The early sun struggled through the fog, a light of dirty wet coins.”) And a keen appreciation for the way our senses are assaulted by institutional spaces, such as academic administration offices. (“Smells of cleaning fluid, aging paper, bookbinding, overcooked coffee.”) The Outlook for Earthlings doesn’t discount the possibility of spectral visitations within the naturalistic confines of our world, but neither does it comfortably decipher them for us when they perhaps appear. The author’s tough-minded body of work, which includes numerous award-winning novels, short story and essay collections, has long refused to do the reader’s necessary work. Our task is clear. Each of us must answer for ourselves when this forceful and singular novel, arguably Joan Frank’s finest work to date, asks of us, “Did any ending ever befit the life it capped?”
Author Biography
Joan Frank is the author of two essay collections, two short story collections, and six novels, including Miss Kansas City, which won the Michigan Literary Fiction Award.
Copyright Information
copyright 2020: Joan Frank, All Rights Reserved
Regal House Publishing
Regal House Publishing was founded in 2014 by Jaynie Royal, editor-in-chief.
View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher Regal House Publishing
- Publication Date October 2020
- Orginal LanguageEnglish
- ISBN/Identifier 9781646030071 / 1646030079
- Publication Country or regionUnited States
- Pages237
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- Original Language TitleEnglish
- Original Language AuthorsEnglish
- EditionFirst
- Copyright Year2020
- Dimensions8 x 5.25 inches
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