June 11, 2017

Spotlight + Giveaway: The Chalk Artist by Allegra Goodman

The Chalk Artist
Author: Allegra Goodman
Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Coming of Age
Release Date: June 13, 2017
Publisher: The Dial Press

Description:

A gifted artist, an idealistic teacher, and a young gamer intersect in this compelling new novel by Allegra Goodman.
       
Collin is young, creative, and unhappy. A college dropout, he waits tables and spends his free time beautifying the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his medium of choice: chalk. Collin’s art captivates people with vibrant colors and intricate lines—until he erases it all away. Nothing in Collin’s life is meant to last. Then he meets Nina...
       
The daughter of a tech mogul who is revolutionizing virtual reality, Nina is trying to give back as a high school teacher—but her students won’t listen to her. When Collin enters her world, he inspires her to think bigger. Nina wants to return the favor—even if it means losing him.

Here is a contemporary, intricate world of students, neighbors, and colleagues: Diana, a teenage girl trying to disappear; her twin brother, Aidan, who plays dangerously with the games produced by Nina’s father; and Daphne, a viral-marketing trickster who unites them all, for better or worse.
       
Wise, warm, and enchanting, THE CHALK ARTIST is both a finely rendered portrait of modern love and a celebration of all the realms we inhabit: real and imagined, visual and virtual, seemingly independent yet hopelessly tangled.

Praise:

“All the characters in The Chalk Artist are questers. An inexperienced English teacher yearns to inspire her students, an artist learns to embrace his talent and a gaming addict finds an unexpected connection to the non-virtual world. This deft novel is filled with the exquisite pleasures one expects from Allegra Goodman, richly layered and emotionally resonant. I absolutely devoured it.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of March and People of the Book

“What begins as a sparkling love story of an idealistic young teacher, Nina, and artist Collin, who works only in chalk, becomes a stunning, rich exploration of whether love, art, literature, and nature can compete with breathtaking virtual worlds.”—Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and The Summer Before the War

A very relevant love story... an idealistic schoolteacher gets her artist boyfriend a job with her father's video game company even as she's losing a promising student to the addiction of gaming. Goodman's eighth novel takes place in two skillfully evoked worlds that are at war for the hearts and minds of young people: video games versus education, specifically high school English classes... The language and details of the games—sparkling aeroflakes, epic qwests, diamond flasks ‘filled with a hatchling dragon's blood’—are... original elements of the book: in fact, nongaming readers may be surprised to find themselves wondering if they are missing out on something.”—Kirkus Reviews

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30213818-the-chalk-artist


Allegra Goodman’s novels include The Cookbook Collector and Intuition. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories. She is a winner of the Whiting Writer’s Award and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


http://www.allegragoodman.com/ 
 Thanks to the wonderful people at Random House, I have (2) hardcover copies to giveaway! Open to US only!
 







 

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