My New American Life: A Novel

Written by Francine Prose

Narrated by Ellen Archer

“Francine Prose is a world-classsatirist who’s also a world-class storyteller.”—Russell Banks
 
Francine Prose captures contemporary America at itsmost hilarious and dreadful in My New American Life, a darkly humorousnovel of mismatched aspirations, Albanian gangsters, and the ever-elusiveAmerican dream. Following her New York Times bestselling novels BlueAngel and A Changed Man, Prose delivers the darkly humorous storyof Lula, a twenty-something Albanian immigrant trying to find stability andcomfort in New York City in the charged aftermath of 9/11. Set at the frontlines of a cultural war between idealism and cynicism, inalienable rights andimplacable Homeland Security measures, My New American Life is a movingand sardonic journey alongside a cast of characters exploring what it means tobe American.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Apr 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9780062072863

Francine Prose

Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

Reviews for My New American Life

[annith-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

?My New American Life? is, as its title suggests, an immigration novel. Lula is a 26-year Albanian who is in the United States illegally, and who finds a job as a live-in ?nanny? for a high school senior named Zeke, whose mother has left him and his father?whom Lulu calls Mr. Stanley?on Christmas Eve. Lulu?s approach to being a nanny is about as absurd as the fact of being a nanny to a 17-year-old: for instance, she routinely makes mojitos for herself and Zeke, although she takes care to water his down. In her free time she writes short stories, which she sometimes passes off as autobiographical, and worries about her best friend Dunia, with whom she had come to the states but who has disappeared. Meanwhile, Mr. Stanley?s best friend, an immigration lawyer working pro bono with prisoners in Guantanamo, agrees in his free time to help Lulu get a visa. One day, out of the blue, three Albanians whom Lulu has never met before drive up to the house in a Lexus SUV and ask if she can safeguard a gun for them. She instantly falls in love with one of them, and so agrees the hide the gun in her bedroom, leading to all sorts of absurd and comic consequences. Dunia resurfaces, and does Mr. Stanley?s wife; Alva disappears and reappears; and the gun, inevitably, goes off. In describing the U.S. through the eyes of a Albanian, Prose conveys the experience of an immigrant as both wholly disorienting and yet surprisingly familiar at the most unexpected moments. Lulu?s American Dream at times seems to dissolve into a depressing realization that life in America, at least post-9/11, may not be so different from life in Albania as she?d hoped. And yet, the novel ends on a strikingly hopeful note.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lula is hired to be companion to a high school boy in his New Jersey home. She has a very cushy, but boring job. She gets mixed up with some con men from her home country just after she received her green card. They ask her to hide a gun that has apparently been used in a grocery store robbery. She fantasizes over one of the Albanian men, but he is soon caught and jailed. Interesting characters, but not much plot.

[mykl8s · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Francine Prose knows how to write the two most important sentences in a story, the last and the first. My New American Life begins with, "The day after Lula's lawyer called to tell her she was legal, three Albanian guys showed up in a brand-new black Lexus SUV." That sentence certainly got my attention, opened several questions, raised expectations, and made me read on. If I had read the jacket blurb I'd have gotten interested too, but not in the way Prose packed so much into that seemingly simple sentence. The final sentence, too much of a spoiler to quote, sums up and looks ahead and makes me want only the best for Lula. All the other sentences in this book, all the likely and unlikely occurrences, all the characters with their subtle and not so subtle flaws add up to a story where I rode happily along, not asking questions, enjoying the trip.

[rdra1962 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good airport read, quick, easy, forgettable.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mildly amusing novel about a young Albanian immigrant's experiences in darkest New Jersey, but not as funny nor as pointed as it could have been. Lula, the likeable central character, left Albania to settle (illegally) in New York. She has moved from waitressing in a mojito joint to a more stable but terminally dull position as a live-in nanny to a teenage boy. The boy's (liberal if boring) father and the father's best friend, a very liberal lawyer, are working to get Lula legally established. That's where matters stand when love enters the picture in the form of an Albanian hoodlum in a black SUV. Complications complicate, and Lula eventually emerges, heading back across the George Washington Bridge.There are some touching characters in the book, particularly Lula herself and Zeke, the teenaged boy. But most of the rest of the people in the book are either cardboard figures, crazy people, or sad sacks. Similarly, there are a good many truly funny apercus about American culture in the age of Homeland Security, but there is little sustained humor. I thought about abandoning the book midway, but I decided I didn't want to leave Lula in New Jersey.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Lula is an economic migrant. She entered the USA on a tourist visa ostensibly to visit “relatives” from her native Albania. But in fact her plan, all along, has been to get work, whatever work she can find without a green card, and then figure out some way of perpetuating her new American life. She succeeds, in her way, despite numerous obstacles and an encroaching balkanization of life in New York and surrounding environs. Near the end of her tether and her visa, Lula is taken in as a sort of au pair / governess / nanny to the teenage son of an emotionally wounded ex-academic, Stanley, who now works in the City. Stanley’s wife slipped into mental illness and out of he and his son’s life one Christmas eve and with her she took much of their reason for living. They exist now in a kind of after-life, the entombed suburbs of New Jersey. Lula, one way or another, is the new blood that may bring them back to life.Francine Prose is a deliberate writer. I can only think that she must have chosen an Albanian refugee/immigrant narrator dismayed at the fear-induced paranoia of Bush-Cheney America for a reason. Does she want her reader to hear echoes of the 1997 Barry Levinson comedy Wag The Dog? Maybe it’s just me. Certainly the stories bear no resemblance other than Lula’s habit of writing “true” stories – a memoir that her high-powered immigration lawyer informs her will very much help her case – which liberally borrow from Balkan folktales and literature. And perhaps because these events take place in the heartland of The Sopranos (a television programme that is referenced a number of times in the novel), it makes sense to introduce a trio of gangsters (Albanians in this case, not Italians) in a shiny black Lexus who inveigle their way into Lula’s dull life in New Jersey and eventually connect or re-connect her with the wider family of Albanians coursing through the veins of America.If you are getting the impression that this novel doesn’t quite know what it wants to be—political satire, immigrant biography, bildungsroman, chicklit, state-of-America report—then you are on the right track. It is always fine writing from Prose, but here it doesn’t add up to a unified whole.

[pennydart · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“My New American Life” is, as its title suggests, an immigration novel. Lula is a 26-year Albanian who is in the United States illegally, and who finds a job as a live-in “nanny” for a high school senior named Zeke, whose mother has left him and his father—whom Lulu calls Mr. Stanley—on Christmas Eve. Lulu’s approach to being a nanny is about as absurd as the fact of being a nanny to a 17-year-old: for instance, she routinely makes mojitos for herself and Zeke, although she takes care to water his down. In her free time she writes short stories, which she sometimes passes off as autobiographical, and worries about her best friend Dunia, with whom she had come to the states but who has disappeared. Meanwhile, Mr. Stanley’s best friend, an immigration lawyer working pro bono with prisoners in Guantanamo, agrees in his free time to help Lulu get a visa. One day, out of the blue, three Albanians whom Lulu has never met before drive up to the house in a Lexus SUV and ask if she can safeguard a gun for them. She instantly falls in love with one of them, and so agrees the hide the gun in her bedroom, leading to all sorts of absurd and comic consequences. Dunia resurfaces, and does Mr. Stanley’s wife; Alva disappears and reappears; and the gun, inevitably, goes off. In describing the U.S. through the eyes of a Albanian, Prose conveys the experience of an immigrant as both wholly disorienting and yet surprisingly familiar at the most unexpected moments. Lulu’s American Dream at times seems to dissolve into a depressing realization that life in America, at least post-9/11, may not be so different from life in Albania as she’d hoped. And yet, the novel ends on a strikingly hopeful note.

[triscuit_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of my favourite American writers, Prose perfectly captures the voices of her characters. Read this to get inside the protaganists' head - Lula is a 36 year old Albanian living in NYC with a man and son abandoned by their wife/mother. She is trying to make a new life in the US and we get to see what life is like in Albania and her take on life in America.

[billpilgrim_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lula is an immigrant from Albania living in NYC, who takes a job in New Jersey as the live-in nanny for a high school senior. The job is not that demanding. The boy drives her to a health food store every day after school, where they buy frozen hamburgers and pizza which she then microwaves for his dinner. The father is a wall-street trader whose mentally-ill wife left on Christmas eve, apparently moving to Sweden. Lula is home alone during the day, and one fateful day just after she gets her immigration status adjusted and is given a work visa, she is unexpectedly visited by three young Albanian men who ask her to hold onto a gun for safe keeping. For some reason she agrees to do this for them.The book is very funny. Lula is a wonderful character, whose point of view about American life and her life back home in Albanian struck me with just the right attitude and sardonic wit.

[kaionvin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

With one glance at the glossy cover girl and the bombastic block letters, my (awesome, ex-Commie Russian) friend issued "So it's meant to be ironic..." as the whole one-sentence summary dismissal of My New American Life. Clearly I need to take a class on the Judging Books By Their Covers* from her, 'cause I found out those words pretty much summarized everything about Francine Prose's novel, including how very poorly it's executed . Post-9/11 immigration politics, condenscention towards the "third world", and the malaise of the American Dream should provide ample satire fodder for Prose: Unfortunately: a) The characters are mostly obnoxious exaggerations, and their actions mere conveniences which provide no framework for any real social criticism. b). The novel inexplicably set in 2004 (neither long enough ago to use clarifying hindsight nor present enough to tap into any cultural momentum) c) Instead of real satire, Prose fills the novel with unfunny** "in Soviet Albania" jokes. *with a weekend symposium on The Usage of the Cutting Ellipsis **added adjective to suck up to teacher of above mentioned classes

[bookchickdi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My New American Life is whip-smart funny. Satire is not always easy to pull off on the written page , and Prose does it amazingly well. Her writing, especially of Lula's thoughts, had me cracking up, like this one:"Lula knew that some Americans cheered every time INS agents raided factories and shoved dark little chicken-packagers into the backs of trucks. She'd seen the guys on Fox News calling for every immigrant except German supermodels and Japanese baseball players to be deported, no questions asked."Lula wants desperately to grab a hold of the American dream, but her job as a nanny to an 17-year-old young man leaves her bored and stuck in the suburbs with no friends and nothing to do. Prose makes you feel her stifling suffocation. When the wanna-be Sopranos Albanians show up and ask her to "hold on to" a gun for them, Lula does as she's asked, even though she knows this could lead to trouble for her and her employer and her deportation. Yet, strangely, she cannot say no to them; and besides, it's a little excitement.I usually identify with at least one of the characters in a novel that I read, but I could not identify with anyone in this book, yet that did not stop me from enjoying it. I live in New York City, a city that runs because of its immigrant population, and this book gave me a new perspective on the people who leave their families behind to start a new life elsewhere.Lula misses her homeland; she cries"for her once-beautiful homeland now in the hands of toxic dumpers and sex traffickers and money launderers. She cried for missing her country, for not missing it, for having nothing to miss. She cried for the loneliness and uncertainty of her life among strangers who could still change her mind and make her go home."All of the characters are interesting: sad sacks Mister Stanley and his friend Don (both divorced and lost), young Zeke (I just wanted to hug him and tell him it will be all right), the Albanians (a riot!) and Lula's friend Dunia, who hits the immigrant lottery by finding a rich man to marry.There are so many fantastic scenes- at the restaurant where Lula gets a celebratory citizenship dinner with Zeke, his dad, Don and his caustic daughter, Lula's date with Alvo, the college trip- all are sharp and memorable.Prose successfully combines the comic and the tragic, and throws in some politics, like Don's work with detainees at Guantanemo. Her portrait of American life soon after 9/11 (through Lula's eyes) is vivid and thought-provoking.

[brennagh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Francine Prose dazzles the reader with her finely honed satiric skills in My New American Life, in which she tells the story of Lulu, an Albanian immigrant who arrives in America during the second Bush-Cheny term. While in New York on a tourist visa, Lulu works illegally at a mojita bar where the wait staff takes bets on who will be the first to be deported. With her visa about to expire, Lulu lands a sinecure when she is hired as a companion for a high school senior whose father does not want him to be home alone in a New Jersey suburb. Both the father, a former academic now working on Wall Street, and son are depressed because the wife and mother has developed mental illness and runaway from the family. Lulu speaks English fluently and by playing a little loose with her family history convinces the father that she is refugee of the Balkan wars. He has his friend, a prominent immigration attorney, procure her a work visa. So life is going smoothly until three Albanian tough guys come to visit Lulu one day. This is a very funny book. After growing up under the most repressive Communist regime in the world, Lulu’s view of American culture—from organic grocery stores to college admissions—is hilarious. Prose’s delicious mix of satire, well developed characters, and galloping narrative kept me turning the pages very late at night. Although the book addresses serious issues regarding immigration and government restrictions, it is never didactic.