My New American Life (Prose)

My New American Life
Francine Prose, 2011
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13:

Summary
Lula, a twenty-six-year-old Albanian woman living surreptitiously in New York City on an expiring tourist visa, hopes to make a better life for herself in America.

When she lands a job as caretaker to Zeke, a rebellious high school senior in suburban New Jersey, it seems that the security, comfort, and happiness of the American dream may finally be within reach. Her new boss, Mister Stanley, an idealistic college professor turned Wall Street executive, assumes that Lula is a destitute refugee of the Balkan wars. He enlists his childhood friend Don Settebello, a hotshot lawyer who prides himself on defending political underdogs, to straighten out Lula's legal situation. In true American fashion, everyone gets what he wants and feels good about it.

But things take a more sinister turn when Lula's Albanian "brothers" show up in a brand-new black Lexus SUV. Hoodie, Leather Jacket, and the Cute One remind her that all Albanians are family, but what they ask of her is no small favor. Lula's new American life suddenly becomes more complicated as she struggles to find her footing as a stranger in a strange new land. Is it possible that her new American life is not so different from her old Albanian one?

Set in the aftermath of 9/11, My New American Life offers a vivid, darkly humorous, bitingly real portrait of a particular moment in history, when a nation's dreams and ideals gave way to a culture of cynicism, lies, and fear. Beneath its high comic surface, the novel is a more serious consideration of immigration, of what it was like to live through the Bush-Cheney years, and of what it means to be an American. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—1947
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Radcliffe College
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; PEN-America prize for translation; Guggenheim Fellowship
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York

When it comes to an author as eclectic as Francine Prose, it's difficult to find the unifying thread in her work. But, if one were to examine her entire oeuvre—from novels and short stories to essays and criticism—a love of reading would seem to be the animating force.

That may not seem extraordinary, especially for a writer, but Prose is uncommonly passionate about the link between reading and writing. "I've always read," she confessed in a 1998 interview with Atlantic Unbound. "I started when I was four years old and just didn't stop.... The only reason I wanted to be a writer was because I was such an avid reader." (In 2006, she produced an entire book on the subject—a nuts-and-bolts primer entitled Reading Like a Writer, in which she uses excerpts from classic and contemporary literature to illustrate her personal notions of literary excellence.)

If Prose is specific about the kind of writing she, herself, likes to read, she's equally voluble about what puts her off. She is particularly vexed by "obvious, tired clichés; lazy, ungrammatical writing; implausible plot turns." Unsurprisingly, all of these are notably absent in her own work. Even when she explores tried-and-true literary conventions—such as the illicit romantic relationship at the heart of her best known novel, Blue Angel—she livens them with wit and irony. She even borrowed her title from the famous Josef von Sternberg film dealing with a similar subject.

As biting and clever as she is, Prose cringes whenever her work is referred to as satire. She explained to Barnes & Noble editors, "Satirical to me means one-dimensional characters...whereas, I think of myself as a novelist who happens to be funny—who's writing characters that are as rounded and artfully developed as the writers of tragic novels."

Prose's assessment of her own work is pretty accurate. Although her subject matter is often ripe for satire (religious fanaticism in Household Saints, tabloid journalism in Bigfoot Dreams, upper-class pretensions in Primitive People), etc.), she takes care to invest her characters with humanity and approaches them with respect. "I really do love my characters," she says, "but I feel that I want to take a very hard look at them. I don't find them guilty of anything I'm not guilty of myself."

Best known for her fiction, Prose has also written literary criticism for the New York Times, art criticism for the Wall Street Journal, and children's books based on Jewish folklore, all of it infused with her alchemic blend of humor, insight,and intelligence.

Extras
• Prose rarely wastes an idea. In Blue Angel, the novel that the character Angela is writing is actually a discarded novel that Prose started before stopping because, in her own words, "it seemed so juvenile to me."

• While she once had no problem slamming a book in one of her literary critiques, these days Prose has resolved to only review books that she actually likes. The ones that don't adhere to her high standards are simply returned to the senders.

• Prose's novel Household Saints was adapted into an excellent film starring Tracey Ullman, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Lili Taylor in 1993.

• Another novel, The Glorious Ones, was adapted into a musical.

• In 2002 Prose published The Lives of the Muses, an intriguing hybrid of biography, philosophy, and gender studies that examines nine women who inspired famous artists and thinkers—from John Lennon's wife Yoko Ono to Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Alice in Wonderland. (From Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
[A] book that brims with smart surprises.... Lula is alert and full of longing and beautifully out of place. Like many newcomers, she's more aware of American vibes and American history than the family that eventually takes her in. Lula's droll observations, as she navigates between her new life and her Albanian friends, give Prose's novel the verve we've seen in her previous fiction.... Throughout this witty novel, she demonstrates an affecting hunger for an American life, even if she often finds that life plenty weird.
Ron Carlson - New York Times Book Review


The story of a good-hearted immigrant doubles as a snapshot of America during Bush II's second term in Prose's uneven latest. Lula is a 26-year-old Albanian working an undemanding au pair gig in New Jersey. Her employer, Stanley, is a forlorn Wall Street exec recently abandoned by his mentally disturbed wife. He asks only that Lula see to the simple needs of his son, Zeke, a disaffected high school senior. Soon, Stanley and one of his friends, a high-profile immigration lawyer, are taken with the tale-telling, mildly exotic Lula (who speaks English flawlessly) and get to work on securing her citizenship. Lula's gig is cushy if dull, a condition relieved when three Albanian criminals, led by the charming Alvo, arrive at Stanley's house with a quiet demand that Lula harbor a (Chekhovian) gun for them. Prose seeks to show America through the fresh eyes of an outsider with a deeply ingrained, comic pessimism born of life under dictatorship, yet also capable of exuberant optimism, and the results, like Lula, are agreeable enough but not terribly profound.
Publishers Weekly


Desperate to stay in America—she's in New York on a tourist visa that's close to giving out—26-year-old Albanian Lula accepts a job in suburban New Jersey as caretaker to woebegone teenager Zach, whose crazy mother upped and left on Christmas Eve. He and his father have since lived in mutually befuddled silence, though Mister Stanley, as Lula calls Zach's dad, is doing his best. The kindly Mister Stanley even arranges for a lawyer friend to assure Lula's legal status. Then, the day after she's got her papers, a black SUV pulls up in front of the house, and the three young men who pile out lay claim to Lula's attention because they're Albanian, too. Lula goes along with their request to hide a gun, then goes along for a ride and falls for the ringleader, Alvo. Soon she's doing what's she's done all along to survive, fabricating at will to explain her relationship to Alvo while trying to steer Zach away from the abyss. Her hopefulness and initiative contrast sharply with the lassitude and utter cluelessness of her host family. Verdict: Does Lula get the new American life she wants so badly? In this sparkling new work by Prose (Blue Angel), she's on her way. An illuminating and ultimately upbeat look at America's immigrant situation that all fiction readers will enjoy. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Prose is dazzling in her sixteenth book of spiky fiction, a fast-flowing, bittersweet, brilliantly satirical immigrant story that subtly embodies the cultural complexity and political horrors of the Balkans and Bush-Cheney America. Best-selling Prose continues to ascend in popularity and acclaim, having just been honored with the prestigious Washington University International Humanities Medal. —Donna Seaman
Booklist

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for My New American Life:

1. Does this book shed any light on how US immigration works—its politics and process? How in have the events of 9/11 changed the climate for people like Lula? 

2.  Francine Prose's novel follows a time-honored literary device: an outsider who views the prevailing culture with new eyes—often holding up societal conventions for re-examination. How does Lula see the US—and what cultural assumptions does she offer up for satire? Are her observations funny...or not? What in particular struck you?

3. Follow-up to Questions #2: What does Lula admire most about the US? What puzzles her?

4. What was Lula's life like in Albania? 

5. Follow-up to Question #4: How does Lula's background affect her view of America (e.g., the game of musical chairs)? 

6. Lula draws astute comparisons between the US and the Balkans. What are some of the differences she comments on? Do those comparisons suggest any similarities (metaphorically or literally?) between the US and the Balkan countries?

7. At one point, Mr. Stanley refers to Lula as "our little Albanian pessimist." No, she quickly corrects him: she's simply a "realist." Who's right...and what is the difference between the two attitudes? How would you describe your attitude toward life?

8. Talk about the folk tales Lula passes off as true. Why does she do so? 

9. What about Lula and Alvo—how does she rationalize her relationship with him?

10. How do Lula's feelings toward Mr. Stanley and Zeke change? How does she come to view the idea of family and what it means to be part of one?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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