SYNOPSIS

An adolescent girl with a very large imagination, a chance encounter with a latex brain, a mother on the lam from her own family, and a lustful sculptress - these are some of the stars in Jennifer Finney Boylan's hilarious new novel, The Constellations, the much-awaited successor to her international triumph, The Planets. Also set in the smoldering coal town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, this outlandish but poignant tale investigates the complications of romance, desire, and sex in the world of fifteen-year-old Phoebe Harrison and her extended family. When Phoebe runs away from home to find her mother, she inadvertently sends the love lives of the adults around her spinning out of control. Her uncle Pat, trysting in a forest with the artist Isabelle Smuggs, finds himself pursued, naked, by angry cows. Isabelle, who makes sculptures of celebrities and then guillotines them, finds the answers to some unpleasant questions in the basement of Wendy Walisko, who raises Sea-Monkeys. Phoebe's sister, Demmie, must grapple with the terrors of dognapping. Her father, Wedley, sees his marriage to Vicki Ambrasino deteriorate after his spouse sleeps with a man obsessed with his cement mixer. And Phoebe's mother, Emily, returns home at last to confront the family her disappearance has split asunder. Boylan's wild journey through the stars ultimately takes us full circle to the center, literally, of the human heart. Through Phoebe's imagination and faith, the members of the Harrison family manage to find themselves reunited, sort of, despite their suspicion that any act of love, though triumphant overall, will still result in bedlam. taken from the cover of the book order this book from amazon.com