Fake Like Me - Hardcover

Bourland, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1538759519 ISBN 13: 9781538759516

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2019

Synopsis

A young painter tracks the mysterious life and death of her role model in this haunting work of literary suspense. A dark, glamorous, and addictive story of good intentions gone awry, from the critically acclaimed author of I'll Eat When I'm Dead.

"Part thriller, part performance art and wholly revolutionary, FAKE LIKE ME confronts American art culture with female bravado." -- BookPage


Carey Logan was the art world's genius wild child.
FAKE

I was a no-name painter clawing my way up behind her.


LIKE

When Carey died, she left a space that couldn't be filled. Except, maybe, by


ME

After a fire rips through her loft, destroying the seven billboard-size paintings meant for her first major exhibition, a young painter is left with an impossible task: recreate the lost artworks in just three months without getting caught - or ruin her fledgling career. Homeless and desperate, she begs her way into Pine City, an exclusive retreat in upstate New York notorious for three things: outrageous revelries, glamorous artists, and the sparkling black lake where brilliant prodigy Carey Logan drowned herself.

Taking up residence in Carey's former studio, the painter works with obsessive, delirious focus. But when she begins to uncover strange secrets at Pine City and falls hard for Carey's mysterious boyfriend, a single thought shadows her every move: What really happened to Carey Logan?
"A smart, satirical take on fashion and media that will have readers snorting with laughter."
-The New York Post on I'll Eat When I'm Dead

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Bourland is the author of the critically acclaimed I'll Eat When I'm Dead, a Refinery29 Best Book of 2017 and an Irish Independent Book of the Year. People called I'll Eat When I'm Dead "delectable." Wednesday Martin, bestselling author of Primates of Park Avenue and Untrue, deemed it "a deft, smart, and hilarious debut." Kirkus noted that "death by beauty was never so much fun," and the book was featured in Fortune, Us Weekly, and The New York Post, among others. I'll Eat When I'm Dead is now available in paperback, and is forthcoming in Hebrew from Matar Press in Israel.

Bourland is a former freelance writer and web producer for titles at Condé Nast and Hearst, among others. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and dog.

Her second novel, Fake Like Me, is forthcoming in June 2019 from Grand Central Publishing in North America and from riverrun abroad. Fake Like Me was written with support from The Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY, where Bourland was a resident over the winter of 2017-2018.

Review

Winner of Baltimore Magazine's 2019 Best Book of Baltimore
A HelloGiggles Best Book of June 2019

A Refinery29 Best Book of June 2019

A Cosmopolitan June 2019 Must-Have

A Fortune Summer 2019 Travel Pick

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of Summer 2019

A CrimeReads Best Crime Books of the Year (So Far)
A Toronto Star Hot Summer Thriller Pick

"Bourland expertly shines a light on the nature of female ambition and desire and the often dark heart of inspiration. Readers fascinated with the blood, sweat, and tears of creating art will be especially rewarded."― Publishers Weekly, (Starred Review)

"Menacing, swirling, hypnotic ... A haunting, dizzying meditation on identity and the blurred lines between life and art."― Kirkus, (Starred Review)

"Bourland has an uncanny knack for spatial description and relates artwork and every last thing in Pine City--"half Dirty Dancing, half Twin Peaks"--with pristinely observed color and feeling. She also nails the creep factor, and her narrator's high tolerance for it, with foreboding signs that the no-name painter isn't totally welcome there, and that there's more to Carey's story. The deck stacked against her, the narrator tells the glitteringly compelling tale of her fevered summer and wisely reveals meaningful intersections of class, gender, and making art."―Booklist, (Starred Review)

"The creative process confronts reality in this compelling literary thriller centering on art, identity, and deception, as told in Bourland's (I'll Eat When I'm Dead) sharp prose. A must for those with an artistic bent, a sheer reading pleasure for all."― Library Journal (Starred Review)

"Fake Like Me is an impressively intelligent thriller set in the art world...Expect insightful paragraphs about the creative process sprinkled among the propulsive mystery."― Refinery29

"[A] page-turning story about art imitating life."― The Palm Beach Post

"The process creators go through for the sake of their art ranges from obsessive to self-destructive, and that ideology is escalated with Bourland's cutthroat prose... The unrelenting threat hovers through the plot and rigidly keeps the reader's head just above water until the end approaches."― Fangoria Magazine

"Bourland has an astonishing ability to write viscerally about art, culture, class, and landscape, for a work that's bound to be one of the summer's biggest crime/literary crossovers."―Literary Hub

"Bourland's terrific new novel engages with the quandary of what makes a work of art authentic."― Crime Reads

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1538759519
• ISBN 13: 9781538759516
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368