The next time Grandpa waved imperiously for me to turn on the VCR, I restarted the tape from that point. Carrie and the boyfriend flickered onto the screen.
Grandpa bellowed with animal rage. I practically vaulted across the room. I didn’t dare to admit I’d done it.
I fast-forwarded to the end. Grandpa nodded and settled back in bed. I surrendered the remote. Grandpa played the tape backward and forward, making what I suppose you could call his own experimental movie.
Years later, I can still close my eyes and see Grandpa’s harem gathered around his bed, poring over a photograph of a snake eating a frog, while my grandfather watched a bloody arm rise again and again from the grave, just when we in the audience are thinking that the murderous girl is dead and that the danger is over.
About the Author
FRANCINE PROSE is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. 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 lives in New York City.
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Also by Francine Prose
FICTION
My New American Life
Goldengrove
A Changed Man
Blue Angel
Guided Tours of Hell
Hunters and Gatherers
The Peaceable Kingdom
Primitive People
Women and Children First
Bigfoot Dreams
Hungry Hearts
Household Saints
Animal Magnetism
Marie Laveau
The Glorious Ones
Judah the Pious
NONFICTION
Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
Reading Like a Writer
Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles
Gluttony
Sicilian Odyssey
The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired
NOVELS FOR YOUNG ADULTS
The Turning
Touch
Bullyville
After
Credits
Cover design by Robin Bilardello
Cover photograph © Radoslaw
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LOVERS AT THE CHAMELEON CLUB, PARIS 1932. Copyright © 2014 by Francine Prose. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Prose, Francine
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 : a novel / Francine Prose.
pages cm
Summary: "A richly imagined and stunningly inventive story of love, art, and betrayal in Paris of the 20's, 30's, and 40's"— Provided by publisher.
1. Paris (France)—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945—France—Paris—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.R68L68 2014
813’.54—dc23
2013048443
ISBN: 978-0-06-171378-1
EPUB Edition APRIL 2014 ISBN 9780062199133
14 15 16 17 18 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 Page 45
