The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan
What can reckless Kitty Duncan Benedict Roberts Duncan teach journalist Mo, her polar opposite, besides “loosen up”? Quite a lot, as it happens. In writing Kitty’s biography (complete with index), Mo sets out to uncover what makes a rebel tick.
Supporting cast: two ex-husbands, one poor, one rich; two boyfriends, one Communist, one psychotic; a daughter named Caesar; a mother named Phyllis; a sister-in-law named Peewee; firemen; detectives; psychiatrists; politicians and the wives of same; bad coffee; tanning oil; married student housing; a GTO convertible; a beach motel in winter.
This is a revised edition of the novel first published in 2006 by Chiasmus Press.
Notices
“Hang onto your hats, ladies and gents, you’re about to meet some folks you won’t soon forget, even if you want to. Kat Meads’s hilarious and hair-raising tale of Kitty Duncan’s reckless and willful descent into perdition is an irresistible one. Maybe Meads isn’t reinventing the novel here, but she’s surely finding marvelous new ways to shape it. She’s like some exhilarated musician who has found a mighty new instrument, and blasts one amazing and unexpected chord after another, alarming us with her narrative bravado and enchanting us with her strange and haunting melody. The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan is a wild ride, indeed, a breathtaking and edgy romp.”
—John Dufresne, author of My Darling Boy
“Once again Kat Meads has written a smart, provocative book that leaves readers laughing out loud and marveling about her virtuoso imagination. Meads’s novel The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan is a picaresque romp, a satire of Southern manners, a witty feminist manifesto and a moving story about family and friendship. This risky, oppositional portrait of the Improper Southern Woman boogies readers to the cliff’s edge and leaves us there, laughing and wondering.”
—Valerie Miner, author of Bread and Salt
“Taut, incisive and sardonic, crisp yet droll, Kat Meads’s quirky fiction has an open-door policy allowing emotion, pathos and drama to come inside, to visit for a while, to watch from the sidelines, or put their hands around your throat.”
—Cris Mazza, author of The Decade of Letting Go
“Why don’t all novels have indexes? Once you find the index in the back of this novel, you’re spoiled for all other novels. Of course this isn’t the only way Kat Meads spoils you for other fiction, for it’s not the only way you feel she’s inventing the genre for you. In Meads’s hands, the novel is a form that can stop when necessary to deliver a thousand-word essay on the topic, ‘Why You Should Boycott Your High School Reunion.’ But at its core, The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan is a character study. And what a character it studies!’
—L.A. Heberlein, author of Every Man Must Build a Home
A North Carolina native, Kat Meads is the author of six novels (one written as Z.K. Burrus), three essay collections, two short fiction collections, an epistolary memoir and a hybrid fiction. She has also published several chapbooks of poetry and prose. Her short plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Toronto (Canada) and elsewhere.
Her writing has been recognized by two Independent Publisher (IPPY) medals, an NEA fellowship, a California Artist fellowship and two Silicon Valley artist grants.
A five-time Foreword Reviews Book of the Year finalist, she has received five Best American Essays Notable citations and writer residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Yaddo, Millay, Blue Mountain Center and Montalvo Center for the Arts.
She lives in California.