Caitlin Horrocks, author of The Vexations will be at Mac's on Monday, October 21st at 7 p.m. The event will also feature a live performance of Erik Satie's Gnossiennes.
About Vexations:
Erik Satie begins life with every possible advantage. But after the dual blows of his mother's early death and his father's breakdown upend his childhood, Erik and his younger siblings -- Louise and Conrad -- are scattered. Later, as an ambitious young composer, Erik flings himself into the Parisian art scene, aiming for greatness but achieving only notoriety.
As the years, then decades, pass, he alienates those in his circle as often as he inspires them, lashing out at friends and lovers like Claude Debussy and Suzanne Valadon. Only Louise and Conrad are steadfast allies. Together they strive to maintain their faith in their brother's talent and hold fast the badly frayed threads of family. But in a journey that will take her from Normandy to Paris to Argentina, Louise is rocked by a severe loss that ultimately forces her into a reckoning with how Erik -- obsessed with his art and hungry for fame -- will never be the brother she's wished for.
With her buoyant, vivid reimagination of an iconic artist's eventful life, Caitlin Horrocks has written a captivating and ceaselessly entertaining novel about the tenacious bonds of family and the costs of greatness, both to ourselves and to those we love.
Caitlin Horrocks is the author of the story collection This Is Not Your City and a recipient of the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Plimpton Prize. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Paris Review, Tin House, One Story, and elsewhere and has been included in The Best American Short Stories. She lives with her family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Review Quotes:
"Horrocks paints an atmospheric portrait of bohemian Paris and a poignant one of Satie and his avant-garde circle, who "lived in the yet: not now, but soon" when their art would be recognized...Finely written and deeply empathetic, a powerful portrait of artistic commitment and emotional frustration."-- Kirkus Reviews
"I've rarely seen a debut as buoyant and inspired as Caitlin Horrocks's The Vexations. In language both champagne-clear and effortlessly lively, Horrocks plumbs the world of Erik Satie through those closest to him, the siblings, friends, and lovers who struggle to support and understand him even as his obsessions isolate and score him deeper than anyone can reach. As much about the vexations and impossibilities of life itself as about Satie's singular genius, this is a dazzling first novel from a writer to watch."-- Paula McLain,
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