Available:*
Library | Collection | Collection | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Beale Memorial Library (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Fiction | FIC GANGI STE | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Easton Branch Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Fiction Area | GANGI ST Next | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Madera County Library (Madera Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Fiction Shelves | GANGI | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Merced Main Library (Merced Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Fiction | FIC GAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Ridgecrest Branch Library (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Fiction | FIC GANGI STE | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Visalia Library (Tulare Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Fiction Area | FIC GANGI STEPHANI | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
One of Library Journal's "Best Books of 2016"
A Best 35 Over 35 Pick
Blogcritics Best Fiction of the Year
" A novel so startlingly original and so unafraid to approach complicated, bald emotion and anger ." -- The Brooklyn Rail
" A very cunning variation on the revenge fable. " -- The New York Times Book Review
"The lusty, livid Joanna is the hottest middle-aged/dead woman in fiction." -- The Minneapolis Star Tribune
Is there a right way to die? If so, Joanna DeAngelis has it all wrong. She's consumed by betrayal, spending her numbered days obsessing over Ned McGowan, her much younger ex, and watching him thrive in the spotlight with someone new, while she wastes away. She's every woman scorned, fantasizing about revenge ... except she's out of time.
Joanna falls from her life, from the love of her daughters and devoted dog, into an otherworldly landscape, a bleak infinity she can't escape until she rises up and returns and sets it right--makes Ned pay--so she can truly move on.
From the other side into right this minute, Jo embarks on a sexy, spiritual odyssey. As she travels beyond memory, beyond desire, she is transformed into a fierce female force of life, determined to know how to die, happily ever after.
Author Notes
STEPHANIE GANGI lives, works and writes in New York City.
Reviews (4)
Kirkus Review
A dead woman betrayed by her younger lover takes gleeful, violent revenge.Yes, we are legion. Yes, we are a pain in the ass. Joanna DeAngelis has died young of cancer, and she has died wronginstead of connecting one last time with her loving daughters and faithful poodle, instead of departing peacefully with her affairs in order, she has spent her last days on Earth scrolling furiously through her Twitter feed for news of her one-time lover, a Columbia professor who abandoned her in the middle of a cancer relapse for Trudi Mink, celebrity dermatologist and social media queen, a woman whose nail color was so heavily tweeted it became the Pantone color of the year. What the hell, Joanna exclaims, upon entering the crowded, unpleasant realm of the spirits. I pictured something out of a Nancy Meyers movie. I follow a light through a meadow, up a slate walk to a many-windowed house with white sofas, andall the dogs Ive had to put down greet me and frisk around me. But instead she joins the unresolved dead, those unable to stop wanting what they cannot have, doomed to haunt their old neighborhoods, to orbit rather than rise. Her new mantra: Make Ned pay. In this debut novel, Gangi has a blast with her undead harpy character, who dive-bombs her own memorial service, trashes Dr. Trudis penthouse, and makes Ned into a social media pariah by running him through an obscene Mick Jagger dance routine in what used to be their favorite bar, where she finds him stepping out on Dr. Trudi with a Columbia undergrad. As Ned comes to fully regret the mistake he can never undo, Joannas daughters, one of whom was drunk and cheating herself at the moment of her mothers death, struggle to find their ways in a motherless world. Or sort of motherless, anyway. Good fun, good writing, and strong characters keep this high-wire plot aloft. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Sisters Anna and Laney are caring for their dying mother, Joanna. For Laney, it is an excuse to move back home after floating aimlessly since college. For Anna, it sends her well-planned life into chaos. Joanna, although dying, is obsessed over her much younger ex, Ned; his glamorous girlfriend; and their star-studded life, playing out on social media. When she dies, her ethereal self is intent on revenge while Ned struggles with the guilt he feels over Joanna and the havoc she is causing from beyond the grave. All four characters tell the story, but it is the sisters who drive the plot as they work through their grief and the shambles it has made of their lives. Joanna's chapters don't work as well, primarily because she is so focused on revenge when it's clear that her own daughters could use a little ghostly intervention. Regardless, The Next is fast-paced and engrossing reading for anyone who has entertained revenge fantasies (so much easier when you're a ghost) and for readers of dysfunctional family fiction with some humor, like Jonathan Tropper's This Is Where I Leave You (2009).--Sexton, Kathy Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Joanna DeAngelis is dying with her life in shambles. It's not just that she's unhappily divorced, leaving behind two adult daughters, but that her sleazy ex-lover, a high-profile blogger named Ned McGowan, has left her for a celebrity dermatologist. Delighted to find herself a ghost, "a mote in the dust of the unresolved dead," Jo seizes the opportunity to exact revenge on Ned, taking quick possession of people and places, manipulating jukeboxes and iPhones, even enlisting the family dog as she accomplishes in death everything her life left unfinished. "The Next" is most successful when it's at its most fiendish, with Jo gleefully terrorizing Ned throughout New York. But when the perspective shifts, moving from her to Ned, her daughters and her ex-husband, the narrative becomes plodding. These other characters can't help suffering in comparison to the paranormal woman scorned. Gangi has come up with a very cunning variation on the revenge fable, but when she strays from Jo, she undermines its simple conceit.
Library Journal Review
Breast cancer patient and scorned woman Joanna wastes her final days obsessing over her ex, Ned, and his rich and famous new girlfriend and cyberstalking them whenever she is awake and able to access her smartphone. Thoughts of exacting revenge consume her, leaving precious little time or energy for her two grown daughters and faithful dog, who still need her. After Joanna dies, she becomes a supernatural presence to be reckoned with and will not rest until she has punished Ned to her satisfaction. There's a lot going on in this modern literary ghost story-love, death, family, revenge, Instagram-but it's never hard to follow. Debut author Gangi uses alternating chapters (and lots of pop music references) to tell the stories of Joanna, her daughters, and Ned. Joanna's chapters-brash, descriptive, lyrical, and often sexually charged renderings of what she's thinking, feeling, and doing, dead or alive-are the highlights. But Gangi's ability to create compelling stories and humanize her supporting characters will make readers empathize with them, too. VERDICT This is a title worth silencing your smartphone for. [See Prepub Alert, 4/3/16.]-Samantha Gust, Niagara Univ. Lib., NY © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.