Sirens & Muses
BOOK SUMMARY
Four artists are drawn into a web of rivalry and desire at an elite art school and on the streets of New York in this "gripping, provocative, and supremely entertaining" debut. It's 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa's unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors.
Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can't shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur, who is publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Berger—a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain relevance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Antonia Angress was born in Los Angeles and raised in San José, Costa Rica. She is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Minnesota MFA program, where she was a Winifred Fiction Fellow and a College of Liberal Arts Fellow. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, the artist Connor McManus. Sirens & Muses is her first novel.
PRAISE
"The characters in Sirens & Muses wake up each day and choose chaos. . . . Angress's strength is her ability to create an engrossing plot, allowing readers to watch as her messy characters navigate their way to the finish line."—The New York Times Book Review
"[H]olds the reader's attention like a gallery so compelling that a visitor is torn between staring at one work and rushing on to the next room."—Glamour
"Convincing and moving . . . Angress' portrayal of the intersection—or disconnect—of art, politics, idealism, and practicality within the web of familial, romantic, and professional relationships is painterly, in the best sense of the word."—Minneapolis StarTribune
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Trade Paperback 384 Pages Fiction 8 in H | 5.2 in W | 0.9 in T | 0.6 lb
