M31 - Hardcover

Stephen Wright

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517568691 ISBN 13: 9780517568699

Publisher: Harmony Books, 1988

Synopsis

Dash and Dot, a midwestern couple who believes in UFOs, manage a fragile, tense household of family and aquaintances until UFO groupies Gwen and Beale arrive, shattering everyone's perception of reality

About this title

From the Publisher:

A disturbing, wildly funny, and bizarre novel set inside a secret America, this surreal and brutally descriptive novel is a masterwork from the author of Going Native and Meditations in Green.

They are called Dot and Dash, a husband and wife team of UFO fanatics famous on the talk-show circuit. In an abandoned church topped not by a cross, but by a radar dish, they wait for their hour of salvation...or their doom. Then two wandering, aging groupies arrive on a pilgrimage of sorts, unaware of what their visit will unleash.

With the strength of their conviction that they are descendants of aliens from the galaxy M31, and egged on by their new entourage of true believers, Dot and Dash find themselves engulfed by the very madness they have spawned. The extended family, already awash in sin, hits the road for a violent, hallucinogenic trip toward the last apparition, or the final truth.

"Mr. Wright has an instinct for reinventing some of the essential American myths, and his ease in combining the mundane and the extravagant, the domestic and the bizarre, lend this novel a dense luminosity. Long after one is finished reading it, the book grows like a strange neon sign in the reader's mind."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Hallucinatory and comic...invigorating shock. Mr. Wright confirms his status as one of the most gifted satirists of recent fiction."--Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"M31 is a devastatingly forceful accomplishment and reestablishes its author as a star of the first magnitude."--The Washington Post Book World

From the Back Cover:

"Mr. Wright has an instinct for reinventing some of the essential American myths, and his ease in combining the mundane and the extravagant, the domestic and the bizarre, lend this novel a dense luminosity. Long after one is finished reading it, the book grows like a strange neon sign in the reader's mind."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Hallucinatory and comic...invigorating shock. Mr. Wright confirms his status as one of the most gifted satirists of recent fiction."--Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"M31 is a devastatingly forceful accomplishment and reestablishes its author as a star of the first magnitude."--The Washington Post Book World

About this edition

• Publisher: Harmony Books
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0517568691
• ISBN 13: 9780517568699
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 214
• Illustrator: Peter Schroth