Future Perfect: A Skeptic’s Search for an Honest Mystic - Softcover

Loustalot, Victoria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1503903648 ISBN 13: 9781503903647

Publisher: Little A, 2019

Synopsis

A witty, unflinching, and provocative memoir about one woman’s journey into the fact, fiction, and fraud of the modern mystical complex.

In the months following the breakup with her longtime boyfriend, Victoria Loustalot crossed paths with multiple psychics eager to impart their vision. Persistent and prescient, each one slightly chipped away at Victoria’s innate skepticism. She had to admit that what they knew about her past was eerily accurate. As for her future? She couldn’t shake the feeling that some powerful force in the universe was trying to tell her something and, for once, she ought to listen. Or at least investigate.

In Future Perfect, Victoria draws on her own personal experience to launch a broader inquiry into the phenomena of psychics, shamans, astrologers, and their fans. Through historical documents and interviews with clairvoyants, seers, and their believers, Victoria opens herself up to the modern mystical complex in cultures and cities around the globe. She pays close attention to what they have to tell us about how we choose to live, what we might be missing out on in the process, and what in the world we’re supposed to do with all that information.

About this title

About the Author

Victoria Loustalot (pronounced LOO–STA–LOW) has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker online, the Onion, Women’s Wear Daily, and Publishers Weekly, among many other publications. Her writing has also been acquired by both the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Thomas J. Watson Library and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. She earned her BA as well as her MFA from Columbia University in New York City and previously worked at Twitter as the global program manager for @TwitterMoments. Future Perfect is her third book. She is also the author of the memoir This Is How You Say Goodbye and Living Like Audrey, a meditation on the life and career of Audrey Hepburn. In the future, according to one psychic, she will call the Scottish countryside home. Another claims she will eventually move to Hawaii. Loustalot is dubiously unopposed to both. Visit her at www.victorialoustalot.com.

Review

“Loustalot’s study is filled with intriguing encounters with individuals possessing occult talents both real and finely crafted...Where she ends up on the divide between proof and faith is fascinating. Witty and occasionally irreverent, Loustalot’s offbeat account provides probing insight into why we see psychics and, perhaps more importantly, how we listen to what they have to say.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Soon after her long-term relationship ends, writer Victoria Loustalot visits an alarmingly accurate psychic with her friends...What ensues is a funny, gripping memoir about a foray into the inexplicable.” —Refinery29

“Loustalot weaves the story of their relationship throughout her reporting on the world of mystics and psychics and those who consult with them, turning Future Perfect into an exploration of how an individual learns to trust in the unknown future, which is one way of saying how to trust in the universe and another way of saying how to trust in one’s self.” —Salon

“This book is not what you think it is. What this book is is Victoria Loustalot reaching into my mind and sorting out my eternal struggles. Here’s the thing: as much as it pains me to say so, my struggles are not all that unique. I wonder about my future, I ponder the mysteries and beauties and great pains of love, I wonder what’s out there that might be greater than me. In navigating the realms of psychics and healers with a skeptic’s eye and an open heart, Loustalot moves toward meaning in a way that is deeply resonant.” —Elizabeth Crane, author of We Only Know So Much, The History of Great Things, and Turf

“Writing from an anxious, impatient, image-driven, data- and option-overloaded generation, Victoria Loustalot looks at our longings and the sources from whom we seek answers. Future Perfect is about the psychics and mystics we either adore or are skeptical about, and the science that supports or debunks their syntheses and claims. But this book is also about us—thirtysomethings, women, memoirists, Instagrammers—what we yearn for, why we search, how badly we want to be found. In reading about Loustalot’s journey, in research and in life, we might just feel a little less lost and a little less alone, and that the future, while imperfect, can be a breeding ground for magic and kindness and empathy. Whether she embraces the scientific or the spiritual, in the end, and certainly evermore, Loustalot embraces herself.” —Cinelle Barnes, author of Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

“You’re not the only one who buys crystals and reads your horoscope and has maybe seen a medium just for fun but also because you were seeking guidance in your life and found it in a stranger who made your arm hair stand up. There’s a reason (several reasons?) why we’re all out there, cobbling together our own belief systems. It’s easy to be snarky or skeptical about the things that people have faith in, especially when that thing is a piece of rose quartz they bought at a strip mall. But Victoria isn’t snarky or belittling, because Victoria, like all of us rubbing our crystals while meditating, is also a seeker. And she’s also a very smart writer, who explores how we all got to this place, where mysticism is mainstream and people are more likely to go see their intuitive healer than their doctor (if they even have one).” —Nora Purmot, creator and host of the podcast Terrible, Thanks For Asking and the author of It’s Okay to Laugh and No Happy Endings

Edition details

• Publisher: Little A
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1503903648
• ISBN 13: 9781503903647
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 271