All his life, Giovanni Bernini has possessed an uncanny gift: he can imitate anyone he meets. Honed by his mother at a young age, the talent catapults him from small-town obscurity to stardom.
As Giovanni describes it, 'No one's disguise is perfect. There is in every person, no matter how graceful, a seam, a thread curling out of them . . . When pulled by the right hands, it will unravel the person entire.' As his fame grows, Giovanni encounters a beautiful and enigmatic stage singer, Lucy Starlight - the only person whose thread he cannot find - and becomes increasingly trapped inside his many poses. Ultimately, he must assume the one identity he has never been able to master: his own.
In the vein of Jonathan Lethem's and Kevin Wilson's playful surrealism, Jacob Rubin's The Poser is the debut of a major literary voice, a masterfully written, deeply original comic novel, and the moving story of a man who must risk everything for the chance to save his life and know true love.
Praise for Jacob Rubin and The Poser
'If a novel can be measured by its imaginative precision, the shrewdness of its characterization, and the authority of its prose, then The Poser, Jacob Rubin's smart and absorbing debut, claims its power early and rarely surrenders it . . . I hear echoes of Steven Millhauser and Tom McCarthy . . . But the sensibility with which Rubin shapes his story is highly individual: probing, witty, yet hiding at its center a strangely iron compassion.' Kevin Brockmeier, The New York Times Book Review
'Zelig with a dash of Being There.' New York Magazine, Approval Matrix (highbrow/brilliant)
'A masterful debut . . . a meditation on the nature of identity delivered with vaudeville verve . . . The Poser, as it follows Giovanni from triumph to perilous triumph, seduces you with its fanciful prose, its larger-than-life characters and its fun-house-mirror take on a land of opportunity where appearance often trumps reality. It's also one heck of a way for Rubin to announce his own presence on the literary stage.' The Washington Post
'Precise and inventive writing . . . The Poser is an exciting debut and I recommend it for its noirish beats. It is also richly, darkly funny. The novel is set in a fictional country that resembles America in the 1940s and '50s, and Rubin has exquisitely created this world; it is easy to get lost in it . . . At its heart The Poser offers a deeply sensitive exploration into matters of identity and authenticity.' Associated Press
