Lauren's Pick
Love, sex, drugs, and dreams. This is Katerina, at least on the surface. From the author of A Million Little Pieces, a sensational memoir injected with fiction, comes a work of fiction brimming with the personal truths of a memoir.
Alternating between time lines, Katerina is, at its narrative core, a love story. When Jay, an emerging writer entrenched in the debaucheries of being an angsty American youth in Paris, meets the gorgeous, sharp-witted Katerina, there is no turning back. The romance is sweeping, erotic, hopeful, yet crushing. Twenty-six years later, Jay lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children. He is rich, famous, and entirely disenchanted with his life when he receives an anonymous message, which draws his consciousness back to 1992 Paris.
Author James Frey is controversial, and his characters also inspire a conflicting range of emotions. There are no good guys or bad guys in Katerina. There are only people struggling with themselves and occasionally with each other. With these characters, it’s clear that James Frey has something to say, and his urgency and signature style is wholly refreshing. Ultimately, Katerina is polarizing, and you’ll hear lots from both sides of the fence, but it will get you thinking and talking. That is Frey’s brilliance.
