Dear Edna Sloane - by Amy Shearn (Paperback)

About the Book

"In the beginning of this epistolary book, we hear from Seth Edwards, a hungry young writer/editor who dreams of literary greatness. He's done all the right things-attended a prestigious graduate program, moved to New York City to work in publishing-but feels further than ever from the joy he used to associate with the written word. Seth decides that what will boost his faltering career and writing life alike is connecting with Edna Sloane, the author he once idolized. Edna Sloane was a promising novelist at the top of her game. Her debut novel was an instant classic as well as a huge commercial success, vaulting her into the heady echelons of 1980s literary New York City-when she suddenly disappeared, and was eventually largely forgotten. Seth searches high and low to track her down, and finally makes contact in an unexpected way. From that point on, they write to one another, becoming closer than either of them could have imagined, revealing more and more as they get to know each other. Edna shares that the pressures of balancing her literary life with her personal life proved to be too much for her to manage. Her book's editor had taken advantage of her in ways she couldn't fully parse at the time, and then her husband took advantage of her in his own ways. Eventually, she realized she couldn't be either of their imagined Edna Sloanes and chose to disappear from the public eye until she could figure out how to be a more authentic version of herself. Seth and Edna circle each other, getting closer and closer, each confused by the intensity of feeling their exchange creates. Then, Seth's professional life reaches an inflection point just as he's finally convinced Edna to share her writing with the world again, and in a movement that echoes the plot of Edna's famous novel, he seems to trade fates with Edna-she emerges with a stunning new book, and he disappears from his own life"--

Book Synopsis

Dear Edna Sloane is a funny, fast-paced epistolary novel about fame, writers, ambition, and the ups and downs of a creative life.

Edna Sloane was a promising author at the top of her game. Her debut novel was an instant classic and commercial success, vaulting her into the heady echelons of the 1980s New York City lit scene. Then she disappeared and was largely forgotten. Decades later, Seth Edwards is an aspiring writer and editor who feels he's done all the right things to achieve literary success, but despairs that his dream will be forever out of reach. He becomes obsessed with the idea that if he can rediscover Sloane, it will make his career. His search for her leads to unexpected places and connections, and the epistolary correspondence that ensues makes up this book, a novel infused with insights and meditations about what our cultural obsession with the "next big thing" does to literature, and what it means to be a creative person in the world.

Review Quotes

Featured in the Shelf Unbound list of 2024 Indie Summer Reads

"I've long been an ardent, near-obsessive fan of Amy Shearn's sophisticated, hilarious, big-hearted fiction, and with Dear Edna Sloane, she once again knocks it out of the park. This charming, compulsively readable novel--which I read in one sitting, laughing out loud every few minutes--brilliantly satirizes the literary world in a manner that reminded me, somehow, of both Laurie Colwin and Candace Bushnell, Curtis Sittenfeld and, more than any other writer, Taffy Brodesser-Akner. But what fuels this tour de force--aside from Shearn's pitch-perfect tone and precise, urgent sentences--are her complex, lovable characters and their emotionally resonant thoughts and ideas. I wanted to live inside this book forever."
--Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year

"Oh to be inside Amy Shearn's head to figure out how she wrote such a wise, witty, and brilliantly knowing novel about the literary life and how authors connect to readers--and to themselves. Seth, a hungry young writer, sets out to find a once-famous and now-vanished novelist, Edna Sloane, sure his discovery will set him up in the literary stratosphere. And here is where things get outrageously creative, because much of his search is told through correspondence, and the deeper his search for Edna, the more his truest--and sometimes uncomfortable--self emerges. Delightful, insightful, and so, so wonderfully meaningful to anyone who truly cares about the arts. I just loved this."
--Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You, Cruel Beautiful World, and With or Without You