Renowned architectural team, Karen and Stan McArdle, are drunk again and driving home over the George Washington Bridge to their Upper West Side brownstone after a tedious dinner party with suburban friends. A young woman, Junie, flags them down, frantic because her boyfriend has just jumped to his death. They call Stan’s identical twin brother, Pickle, to rescue not just Junie, but also help them avoid a potential DUI.
Karen invites Junie to stay in the perfectly decorated lower level of their brownstone, partly because she feels sorry for the distraught young woman and but also as a buffer for her dysfunctional marriage. Pickle immediately takes advantage of the situation. A guileless Junie becomes the object of his affections and serves as an unwitting psychological pawn for the dysfunctional McArdle clan. As the novel barrels toward its surprising conclusion, long-held alliances are threatened and shocking secrets are exposed. Love is the poison, the antidote, the devil and, ultimately, the hero.
Reviews
“Surprising and audacious…Pickle’s Progress is a deeply weird novel that succeeds because of Butler’s willingness to take risks and her considerable charisma. She’s a gifted storyteller with a uniquely dry sense of humor and a real sympathy for her characters. A promising fiction debut from a writer who seems incapable of not going her own way.”
—Michael Schaub, NPR.org
“A suicidal jump off the George Washington Bridge sets the lives of four New Yorkers careening out of control in the mordant debut novel by memoirist Butler. With detached wit and restrained horror at her characters’ behavior, Butler explores the volatile nature of identity in this provocative novel.”
—Booklist
“Butler’s debut is character-driven…the book starts with a crash then slows as the characters’ personalities develop. In this study of how childhood experiences shape perception, and how deception keeps people caged, Butler shows that nothing need be set in stone.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A wild ride. A suicide, an Upper West Side brownstone, and twin brothers come together in this surprising and trenchant debut novel from memoirist Marcia Butler.”
—Vulture
Advance Praise
“The four main characters in Pickle’s Progress seem more alive than most of the people we know in real life because their fears and desires are so nakedly exposed. That’s because their creator, Marcia Butler, possesses truly scary X-ray vision and intelligence to match.” –Richard Russo
“Oh, what a pickle Pickle’s Progress puts us in–a duke’s mixture of villainy, deceit, betrayal, and, Lord help us, romantic love–all of it rendered in prose as trenchant as it is supple. Clearly, Ms. Butler is in thrall to these fascinatingly flawed characters (us, but for time, circumstance, and bank account), and by, oh, page 15 you will be, too. Let’s hope this is just the first of many more necessary novels to come.” —Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once
“How does healing happen? Sometimes in quirkier ways than you might expect. Butler’s blazingly original novel debut is a quintessential moving, witty, New York City story about the love we think we want, the love we get, and the love we deserve, all played out with symphonic grace. –Caroline Leavitt, author of With or Without You
“Like the first icy slug of a top-shelf martini, Marcia Butler’s debut novel is a refreshing jolt to the senses. Invigorating, sly and mordantly funny, Pickle’s Progress offers a comic look at the foibles of human nature and all the ways love can seduce, betray and, ultimately, sustain us.” –Jillian Medoff, author of This Could Hurt
“Marcia Butler’s debut novel Pickle’s Progress is funny, sharp, totally original, and completely engrossing. It joins the pantheon of great New York novels. I loved every page.” –Julie Klam, author of The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters
“Marcia Butler’s debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, is a fierce and glorious NY story. Written in brave and startling prose, Butler has written a fast-paced tale of identical twin brothers and the women in their orbit, who collide and dance in a haunting tale of tragedy, passion and love. Throughout this surprising work, we see NY in all its beauty and raunchiness, with a finely tuned soundtrack, so that the city itself becomes an integral part of the complex and compelling plot. Rare is the brilliant memoirist who also writes fiction with the same sure hand, but Marcia Butler is such an author.” –Patty Dann, author of The Wright Sister
“Pickle’s Progress is a wild trip into the heart of New York City with wonderful, complicated, highly functioning alcoholics as tour guides. Marcia Butler’s characters are reflections of the city they live in: beautiful but flawed, rich but messed up, dark and hostile – but there’s love there, if you know where to find it. Butler’s sharp, artistic sensibilities shine through here, and the result is a brutal, funny story of family, regret, and belonging.” – Amy Poepell, author of Musical Chairs