In a Perfect World
by Laura Kasischke

List Price: $13.99
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780061766114
Publisher: Harper Perennial

In a Perfect World is critically acclaimed writer Laura Kasischke’s new novel of marriage, motherhood, and the choices we make when we have no choices left.

It was a fairy tale come true when Mark Dorn --- handsome pilot, widower, tragic father of three --- chose Jiselle to be his wife. The other flight attendants were jealous: She could quit now, leaving behind the million daily irritations of the job. (Since the outbreak of the Phoenix flu, passengers had become even more difficult and nervous, and a life of constant travel had grown harder.) She could move into Mark Dorn's precious log cabin and help him raise his three beautiful children.

But fairy tales aren't like marriage. Or motherhood. With Mark almost always gone, Jiselle finds herself alone, and lonely. She suspects that Mark's daughters hate her. And the Phoenix flu, which Jiselle had thought of as a passing hysteria (when she thought of it at all), well... it turns out that the Phoenix flu will change everything for Jiselle, for her new family, and for the life she thought she had chosen.

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1. Numerous fairytales are interwoven with the plot of In a Perfect World. What are some of these tales, and how do they function within the story? How might this novel be read, itself, as a kind of fairytale?

2. The unfolding of the love story between Jiselle and Mark is cut short with his quarantine and is soon overshadowed by her life with his children. How does this become its own romance, and in what ways does this shift comment on expectations regarding love and marriage?

3. How do you feel about the changes in Jiselle's character as the novel unfolds? How do you feel about the way she handles and reacts to the events of the novel, particularly the demands of step-motherhood?

4. Joy is a character who is never encountered in the novel, but who seems important nonetheless. How do you interpret her shadow-character, and how does Jiselle's ‘relationship' to her change during the course of the novel?

5. The author researched the Black Death in writing this book. Which events seem historically familiar? Which details seem to parallel contemporary concerns and events? Does the plot seem more fabulist than realistic? Can you imagine the kind of future the author has imagined?

6. Did you see Mark as a sympathetic character? Was Jiselle foolish to marry him?

7. At which moments in the novel do we see Jiselle's relationship to the children changing? Do you feel that, at some points, they become ‘her' children? If so, where in the novel does this seem to occur?

8. Jiselle and the children are very isolated in this novel. Does this seem realistic to you? How do you feel about the few additional characters who figure in it: Jiselle's mother, Paul Temple, Tara Temple, the Schmidts?

9. What does the title, In a Perfect World, say to you about the themes and structure of the novel?

10. Is this an apocalyptic novel? What is your interpretation of the ending?

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"Kasischke could have... gone a hundred different ways: backwoods thriller, social satire, meditation on family, or pastoral love story. Instead, she craftily combines all these genres, creating a farcical, dark, resonant near-future world... . Lurking in the background is a chilling sense of foreboding straight out of Deliverance, swirling around a dysfunctional accidental-family dynamic that’s as familiar as it is flawed. Kasischke... writes with worldly-wise profundity and sudden beauty but also sly humor... Her brevity actually enhances the story’s propulsive quality. Reading In a Perfect World is like watching The Birds or another eerily vague tale of inchoate dread. We never really get answers, but we’re helplessly drawn in by a slew of burning questions, with this one foremost: When can we expect a sequel…or is that nothing but a doomed hope?"

— Elle

"Kasischke finds beauty amid the apocalypse in her timely seventh novel... Kasischke’s penchant for disconcerting but absorbing fiction is on display, as is her facility with language. Startling, sometimes violent images combine with strikingly dispassionate narration to create a fictional world where terror, beauty and chaos walk hand in hand."

— Publishers Weekly

"Although Laura Kasischke’s novel is frighteningly timely with its backdrop of a pandemic flu, it is also touchingly timeless. From its haunting opening image to its riveting end, this is a tale of beauty, resilience, love, sacrifice, and even grace found in the most unlikely of places. In a truly ‘perfect world’ every book I read would inspire me like this one."

— Katrina Kittle, author of The Kindness of Strangers

"In a Perfect World reveals astonishing and tender insight into human nature while exposing a terrifying, yet believable, world I’d never before imagined. This story will grasp onto your heart before swiftly carrying you away... . If you were going to pitch this book for a movie you’d say something like, “A great Anne Tyler story meets a great Margaret Atwood story with a little bit of Ann Packer mixed in.” But, really, it’s even better than that: terrifying, brutally honest, and totally believable."

— Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties