American Mermaid

loop like a corporate courtyard fountain, I d forget where I was.

American Mermaid was published in December. I was a nobody--no babbling spectral internet persona, just a teacher--and I was told that I was lucky to get an advance of forty-five thousand. It seemed monumental, that sum, and I was grateful for the seventeen grand I pocketed after my agent nibbled and taxes chomped at it. Ten grand paid off my credit card debt. But even having seven thousand extra bucks was thrilling. Unallotted dollars not clothing me or housing me or drunk down inescapably on Friday at a bar three blocks from school.

I was thirty-three and even with my extra money my legs were hairy and my workplace was dirty and it was fine. Then suddenly it seemed the whole world might melt and recool in a smooth new shape.

In the spring, just a few months into the book s publication, American Mermaid appeared on the Instagram account of a professional internet presence named Stem Hollander, an athletic charmer in his midforties with floppy blond hair and ten cheeky grins, whose humpy Segway salsa dancing gets millions of likes between endorsements of fair-trade avocados and weed-lobby Democrats. After Hollander, the librarians picked it up. Then, to my surprise, some national treasure on the Today show open-throat screamed about it too early in the morning. Thanks to her it was packed up and palleted to Costco, where I ve seen it myself on a chessboard of hardbacks, a rook s jump away from Dieting for Joint Health. I did a gimmicky magazine interview where I met a male journalist my age in a leather jacket in Atlantic City at a bar with live mermaid shows. Women with big naturals, their legs bound in plastic tail fins, pretended not to need to breathe, writhing on the other side of a scratched pane while we drank rum runners as if the Garden State Parkway weren t five miles away. I cri

takedown. A hoot and a half. American Mermaid is all of these, and more. So witty and marvelous you won t be able to put it down. So pick it up!
Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost

"I was hooked from the first page. American Mermaid is brilliantly sharp, funny, and thought-provoking, the gripping story of a woman trying to find her way in our chaotic world."
Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Circe and The Song of Achilles

"American Mermaid is shapeshifting novel composed of wildly divergent elements a biting Hollywood satire, a magical realist book-within-a-book, and a moody meditation on identity and selling out. It probably shouldn t work, but it succeeds brilliantly, thanks to Julia Langbein s tonal control and wicked sense of humor. This is a a debut novel of unusual ambition and scope."
Tom Perrotta, author of Tracy Flick Can't Win and Mrs. Fletcher
 
American Mermaid is, like a mermaid herself, a beautiful mix of two things. It is a brilliantly funny and perfectly modern satire, as well as being an elegant exploration of soulfulness, longing and belonging, and the ungovernable wildness of nature herself. I ve never read anything quite like it, and I loved it.
Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of City of Girls

"Every time I picked up this book I both laughed out loud and sighed in admiration. Deeply hilarious, delightfully strange, intricately constructed and remarkably satisfying, American Mermaid is sensational."
Julia May Jonas, author of Vladimir

An absolute weirdo masterpiece. With her debut, Julia Langbein pulls off an impressive tonal tightrope walk that would send a lesser writer stumbling to the ground. American Mermaid manages to be so many things at once a zany and savage satire about Hollywood, a tale of magical realism, and an aching story about what comes after you achieve your dream, how the depths of your ambition can swallow you whole. This novel is both a pleasure to read and signals the arrival of an exciting new writer to watch.
Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl

"A salty, sleek and scheming satire, American Mermaid considers dangerous and alluring myths surrounding creative control, compromise and complicity. Told with a caricaturist s energy and dynamism, Langbein s layered narratives gleefully expose Hollywood s ritualized humiliations. Full of skewering, mischievous precision, it is a glittering, baited hook of a novel."
Eley Williams, author of The Liar's Dictionary

"Filled with wit and more than few laugh-out-loud moments...A downright delightful debut novel."
Booklist (starred review)