Melanie Sumner

How to Write a Novel Melanie Sumner

Publisher Marketing:"How to Write a Novel" is a portrait of a stressed-out modern family, narrated by precocious twelve-year-old Aris Thibodeau as she writes her first novel. A brilliantly funny work of metafiction, Aris is Adrian Mole if he were living with his frazzled single mother in Kanuga, Georgia. With the same wry humor as Sue Townsend s bestselling series, Aris attempts to find her mother, Diane, a suitable mate. Aris dad, a sax-blowing rogue from Louisiana, died when Aris was just a baby but still resides as a ghost in the house, blowing fuses and sabotaging Diane s dates. Penn, a socialist/atheist/not-quite-redneck nanny, serves as a positive male influence for Max, Aris emotionally frenetic eight-year-old brother. Aris thinks she could use some time with the family therapist, but money is tight, so Diane gives her a book, "Write a Novel in Thirty Days!," in the hope that Aris will work through her own issues on her laptop. Aris begins her book with a broken pipe in the bathroom, a flood that unearths Diane s stash of journals. While reading the journals, Aris discovers a terrible secret regarding her dead father s childhood, and their frenzied suburban life begins to break down: Diane loses her job, Max melts down when he learns building Legos isn t a viable talent for the talent show, and Aris mails her mother s journals out to strangers on eBay and stalks the neighborhood s child molesters with a machete. But as Aris machinations to set Diane up with Penn begin to bear fruit, Aris wonders if a normal family isn t what she d needed after all. Captured through the lens of a snarky, perceptive adolescent playing at adulthood, "How to Write a Novel" is a brilliant satire of the modern family, at once endearing, hilarious, and bittersweet a distillation of the sorts of witty, insightful quips that keep you from drowning your kid in the bathtub." Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2015 (EAN 9781101873472, Paperback) Library Journal 05/15/2015 pg. 77 (EAN 9781101873472, Paperback) Contributor Bio:  Sumner, Melanie Melanie Sumner is the author of "The School of Beauty and Charm", a novel, and "Polite Society", stories. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she earned her MFA from Boston University and was the recipient of a Whiting award in fiction in 1995. She currently lives in Rome, Georgia, and teaches creative writing at Kennesaw State University.