Unlucky Mel - by Aggeliki Pelekidis (Hardcover)

About the Book

"When doctoral student Melody Hollings's father shows signs of dementia, she realizes she needs to win a post-graduate fellowship to stay local. Her friend, Ben, offers to edit her submission. Instead he trashes her book and wins the fellowship. Mel has a nemesis. Her only course of action is revenge!"--

Book Synopsis

In Unlucky Mel, PhD candidate Melody Hollings is in the final year of her creative writing program in upstate New York. Her dream life of landing the perfect academic job somewhere far away from her small hometown and publishing her first novel is so close to becoming a reality. But first she has to finish writing that book. Oh, and graduate. To do both, she needs her good friend Ben to reciprocate all the help she's given him over the years on his writing.

But when Mel's widowed father starts acting strangely, she is thrown. After chalking it up to a dramatic attempt to manipulate her into moving back in with him, she discovers that he really is suffering from dementia. Now she'll need to stay local to care for him. Her dream is dying and her best option is to win a postgraduation fellowship through her alma mater.

Despite all the upheaval in Mel's life, rather than helping her, Ben turns on her in a shocking betrayal. For the first time, Mel has a nemesis! The stress of caring for her father, teaching too many students, and living with so much uncertainty over her future escalates Mel's desire for retribution--until one night, she discovers an opportunity to ruin Ben's reputation.

Unlucky Mel is a smart, funny debut in which Pelekidis explores the lengths we're willing to go to in order to even the score and the ways in which women are often expected to sacrifice their professional ambitions for the men in their lives.

Review Quotes

Eloquent, erudite, original, memorable, and a fun read from start to finish, Unlucky Mel is raised by its author to a significant level of literary excellence, making it especially and unreservedly recommended for community and college/university library Contemporary American Literary Fiction collections.

-- "Midwest Book Review"

Unlucky Mel is balm for any reader who has attempted a PhD. Its twinned plots--dissertation and dementia--express the imprisoned, infantilized state many humanities graduate students experience.

-- "Harvard Review"

What results in Pelekidis's debut novel is nothing short of a wildly humorous, sometimes tragic, and always relatable journey of a writer who finds herself sacrificing more than she expected.

-- "Tupelo Quarterly"

A witty, inside look at academia.

-- "The National Herald"

About the Author

Aggeliki Pelekidis holds a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from Binghamton University. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals. She used to work as a public relations executive in New York City.