Anywhere but Here - Mona Simpson

A national bestseller-adapted into a movie starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon-Anywhere But Here is the heart-rending tale of a mother and daughter. A moving, often comic portrait of wise child Ann August and her mother, Adele, a larger-than-life American dreamer, the novel follows the two women as they travel through the landscape of their often conflicting ambitions. A brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving, even at the risk of profound disorientation, Anywhere But Here is a story about the things we do for love, and a powerful study of familial bonds.

Mona Simpson is the author of Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, and My Hollywood. Off Keck Road won the Heartland Prize from the Chicago Tribune and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has received a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim grant, a Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writers' Award, and, recently, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Simpson is on the faculty at UCLA and also teaches at Bard College.

www.monasimpson.com

"Brilliant, funny, astonishing." -The New York Times Book Review

"Stunning . . . Simpson takes on-and reinvents-many of America's essential myths." -The New York Times

"Mona Simpson writes with confidence, with a swagger. She is already a master." -Anne Tyler, USA Today

"Anywhere But Here is a wonder: big, complex, masterfully written, it's an achievement that lands [Simpson] in the front ranks of our best novelists." -Newsweek

"The two women in this book are American originals. Ann is a new Huck Finn, a tough, funny, resourceful love of a girl. Adele is like no one I've encountered, at once deplorable and admirable-and altogether believable." -Walker Percy