Indies Introduce

Fiction

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  Tuesday Nights in 1980, Molly Prentiss
  Simon & Schuster/Scout Press, 9781501121043, April 5, 2016 (Fiction)
  

  Tuesday Nights in 1980 exudes an alchemical talent. Only magic can explain Molly Prentiss’ pitch-perfect evocation of the excitement, energy, and squalor that were palpable in NYC’s art world at the dawn of a new decade.

  Anmiryam Budner, Main Point Books, (Bryn Mawr, PA)
  
  

  At the glittering nexus of 1980s New York City’s burgeoning art scene, brilliantly eccentric art critic James Bennett encounters Raul Engales, a talented painter with hidden pain, and Lucy, the naïve, wide-eyed, small-town girl recently arrived in the glittering city. Engales lives the artist’s life, squatting in abandoned buildings, creating art side by side with the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Bennett is the enviable New York Times columnist who can make or break an artist’s career. With bold brushstrokes and inventive style, Molly Prentiss paints a fresh and vivid portrait of them and of the gallery owners, fellow artists, and family members that orbit around them or trail in their wake, so vivid that the reader feels as though they are discovering this new talent, this new artist, this new genius among us. 

  Jenny Lyons, The Vermont Book Shop, Middlebury VT
  

  In this muscular novel, Molly Prentiss captures the gritty energy and passionate life of the SoHo art scene at the dawn of the 1980s. Two men—a skilled and insightful critic and an Argentinian political refugee artist—and their shared muse dominate the novel, but Prentiss’ real concern is the drama of creation: of self, of art, of the city itself. Set against those creative drives are the dangerous forces of urban decay, political dangers, and the characters’ own failings. The result is a powerful tension propelling both reader and story

  Michael Barnard, Rakestraw Books, Danville, CA