Perfect Reader

April 26, 2010
This imaginative debut takes a profound look at the connection between words on the page and the infinite interpretations for a reader. For heroine Flora Dempsey, the father-daughter bond is a further complication. Flora moves back to her picturesque New England hometown after the death of her father, former president of the town’s local college, where she discovers that her inheritance includes the role of literary executor. Lewis Dempsey, an academic writer, has left behind a manuscript of erotic poems written to Cynthia, his lover, whose existence is a surprise to Flora. Cynthia, meanwhile, attempts to become part of Flora’s life, wanting friendship—and publication of the poems. Overwhelmed, Flora navigates her father’s poetry, retreats into her memories of childhood and her parents’ divorce, and poignantly contemplates the acts of reading and writing. Pouncey has skillfully created a portrait of smalltown academia, where the relationships between reader and text are just as elusive and complex as the relationships between father and daughter, husband and wife, or between two lovers.

Starred review from March 1, 2010
Fathers, daughters and poetry are ruefully, wittily combined in an introspective literary debut.

The soul-searching of a willful daddy's girl who has just lost her father forms the core of Pouncey's accomplished novel, which weaves bookish themes into a getting-of-wisdom tale set in the fictional New England college town of Darwin. Only-child Flora Dempsey returns to Darwin, the place where her parents' marriage dissolved, after inheriting the house, dog, money and, as literary executor, unpublished poems of her father Lewis, distinguished ex-president of Darwin College. The poems, written in praise of his new love, fellow-academic Cynthia, land Flora with dilemmas both personal and critical as she considers their publication. While reviewing her troubled childhood, loyalty to both parents, best friendship with a girl she harmed and attitudes to academe and literature, Flora also starts a relationship with Paul, Lewis's lawyer. Pouncey's beady perceptions, voiced through Flora's none-too-sweet nature, render the narrative dryly comic as well as psychologically and philosophically astute. Whether or not to publish is both a storm in a teacup and a signifier of Flora's maturity as she tries to balance her own perversity with the motives, allegiances and characters of those around her, including her dead father, on whose behalf she will eventually make good decisions.

Tender, smart and often wicked, especially on the subject of college towns, Pouncey's first is impressively mature and entertaining.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2010
After her father's death, underachiever Flora Dempsey returns to Darwin, the New England college town where her eminent father taught English literature. She inherits not only his house and his dog but also his unpublished poetry, written to a girlfriend Flora didn't know he had. In a year of grieving, Flora revisits her childhood memories of her parents' divorce and the best friend who abandoned her following a terrible accident while debating whether to publish her father's manuscript. Her budding relationship with her father's lawyer becomes a casualty of a breach of trust that breaks Flora out of her inertia and leads her to leave Darwin. The academic setting is wryly rendered, comic but slightly sympathetic. Flora is a late bloomer, a late twentysomething still struggling to find her place in the world; dealing with being her father's literary executor is the push that she needs to accept responsibility for her own development. VERDICT readers who like books that poke a bit of fun at the rarefied academic atmosphere combined with a coming-of-age story will enjoy this charming first novel.Amy Ford, St. Mary's Cty. Lib., Lexington Park, MD

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2010
Flora, a twentysomething magazine editor, enjoys her visits with her long-divorced, revered literary critic, former college president father, but she has never bothered to read the book that made him famous, Reader as Understander, or the new, unpublished poems hes entrusted her with. When he dies unexpectedly, Flora is stunned to find herself designated as his literary executor. In a miasma of regret and grief, she quits her job and returns to her stifling New England hometown, Darwin, much to her irascible mothers dismay. There Flora discovers that her fathers poems were inspired by his love for an art historian fond of flowers and bright colors who is anxious to see the lyrics in print. Floratesty, rude, wolfish, and terribly lonelyenrages everyone as she struggles to understand all that shes lost and found. Although poorly paced, Pounceys first novel is nonetheless sparkling, shrewd, and at times hilarious in its parsing of family dynamics, academic competition, the solace of literature, the aggression of the blogosphere, and what it truly means to be a perfect reader and a generous soul.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)