Claire Dederer – författare

From the author of the New York Times best seller Poser and the acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble, Monsters is "part memoir, part treatise, and all treat" (The New York Times). This unflinching, deeply personal book expands on Claire Dederer's instantly viral Paris Review essay, "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?" Can we love the work of artists such as Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Miles Davis, Polanski, or Picasso? Should we? Dederer explores the audience's relationship with artists from Michael Jackson to Virginia Woolf, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. Does genius deserve special dispensation? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss? Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.

The must-read book for fans everywhere ''How rare and nourishing this sort of roaming thought is and what a joy to read''MEGAN NOLAN, Sunday Times

''An exhilarating, shape-shifting exploration of the perilous boundaries between art and life''JENNY OFFILL

And what are we to do with that love? How are we, as fans, to reckon with the biographical choices of the artists whose work sustains us?

Wildly smart and insightful, Monsters is an exhilarating attempt to understand our relationship with art and the artist in the twenty-first century.

''An incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time'' NICK HORNBY''Part memoir, part treatise, and all treat'' New York Times''Clever and provocative'' Daily Telegraph

A hilarious, confrontational and moving story of one woman''s attempts to navigate her way through the challenges of mid-life, for lovers of HOW TO BE A WOMAN and I''M NOT WITH THE BAND. ''Claire Dederer is not only a brilliant author, but an honest and brave one'' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of EAT, PRAY, LOVEClaire Dederer''s youth was wild, an endless cascade of beer and rock and acid and sex that left her benumbed and adrift. But then, after two decades of disciplined transformation, she''d become a successful writer, a faithful wife, and a mother - a real adult. That is, until one morning at 44, she found herself overcome by the same sexual cravings and ineffable sadness of her younger years. The hedonistic girl, ''that crazy bitch'', was back - or had she never left?Frank and disarming, seductive and hilarious, Love and Trouble: A Mid-life Reckoning is Dederer''s attempt to reckon with those urges, and to reconcile the girl she''d been with the woman she''s become.