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Shop nowExquisite Mariposa
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Learn moreGiven the initials F.A.D. at birth, Fiona Alison Duncan has always had an eye for observing the trends around her. But after years of trying to please others, looking for answers in books and astrological charts, and clocking endless hours as a celebrity journalist just to make rent, Fiona discovers another way of existing: in the Real, a phenomenological state few humans live in.
Fiona’s journey to the Real takes her to Koreatown, Los Angeles, where she sublets a room in La Mariposa. There she meets a cast of friends and lovers, like Amalia, an artist whose muse is her pet pigeon; Lucien, an infamous philanderer; and Morgan, whose anxiety keeps her from ever sitting still. When Fiona is offered the chance to turn her new household into a reality TV show, she jumps at the opportunity―but it isn’t long before she begins to question this new script.
In the midst of her Saturn Return, Fiona pulls the plug on the reality TV deal, heals a few addictions, and returns to writing with Exquisite Mariposa, a debut novel starring her housemates as they ask questions of survival, art, love, language, and the possibilities of rewriting one’s life.
Fiona Alison Duncan is a Canadian American artist, writer, and organizer. She’s the founding host of Hard to Read, a lit series, and Pillow Talk, community organizing on sex, love, and communication. She lives in New York and Los Angeles.
If you've watched TV at all in the past ten years, you've definitely seen her face and heard her voice countless times in any number of wildly successful national, global, and Super Bowl commercials, as well as playing the first blond Vulcan in Star Trek history. The daughter of two English professors, Natasha Soudek was raised in the South, speaks native German, lived in Berlin and Vienna, and finally settled in the Lower East Side of New York City as a teenager. After honing her stage presence by studying acting and playing hundreds of sold-out live music shows (singing and playing bass), she moved to LA to record with Channel/DreamWorks and act on TV. Favored on KCRW, Chris Douridas compared her voice and songwriting to the Beatles' Let it Be in meaning and soulfulness . . . qualities that translate especially well into her career as an audiobook narrator. Her voice is as distinct and memorable as the range of characters she's played on-screen, which gives listeners an immediate familiarity to connect to, along with a warmth and intimacy that spans and uplifts any genre.
Reviews
“An original, insightful debut that doesn’t quite fit in a box—but checks them all.”
“Exquisite Mariposa is one of those books that had me from the first sentence to the last and beyond. Duncan churns up all the digital, performative, hypersocial chaos of our present ‘reality,’ even of the near future, and crystallizes it into dreamy and raw poetry. Page after page, paragraph after paragraph, this story, built on jewel-like insights, sometimes made me laugh and sometimes made me sad and always registered as true.”
“Ecstatic and painful, Exquisite Mariposa is a diligent search for the heart of The Real, taking its place alongside the great Young Girl books of becoming, from Mary McCarthy’s The Company She Keeps to Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends. To Duncan, The Real equals self-knowledge, compassion, perception. She is a genius and I’d follow her anywhere.”
“An unapologetically raw account of coming of age broke in Trump-era Los Angeles in the social media–saturated Now, this meditation (almost manifesto?) on materialism, media, power, performance, and sexuality uses inventive, of-the-moment language to tackle that circuitous route to self-discovery that is your twenties—in a startlingly original way.”
“Wordplay and sonic games abound.”
“Exquisite Mariposa knows the seduction of stars (celebrities) and stars (celestial).”
“A funny, thought-provoking novel that levels pointed critiques at gender and class inequality and captures what it’s like to be a young person today.”
“A splendidly weird and comforting debut novel about the costs of living happily in a society overrun with demoralizing demands.”
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