The Portable Veblen

Description

A riotously funny and deeply insightful adventure through capitalism, the medical industry, family, love, war and wedding-planning - from an electrically entertaining new voice. Can squirrels speak? Do snails scream? Will a young couple, newly engaged, make it to their wedding day? Will their dysfunctional families ruin everything? Will they be undone by the advances of a very sexy, very unscrupulous heiress to a pharmaceuticals corporation? Is getting married even a remotely reasonable idea in the twenty-first century? And what in the world is a 'Veblen' anyway?

Awards

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016 

Reviews

'Man oh man, do I love this book! Audacious, imaginative, and totally wonderful: The whole books zips and zings' Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves 'The Portable Veblen is the squirreliest novel I ever read. I enjoyed it completely' Ursula K. Le Guin 'A deeply observed universe where heroines are named for economists and the high stakes of capitalism are set to collide with the chatter of small wild animals. Both humorous and wrenching' Samantha Hunt, author of The Invention of Everything Else and Mr. Splitfoot

Author description

Elizabeth McKenzie's work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. She received her MA from Stanford, was an assistant fiction editor at The Atlantic, and currently teaches creative writing at Stanford's school of continuing studies.