Overview

From the author of the viral phenomenon The Roommate comes a literary horror novel following a young playwright who conjures up a true tragedy through a Machiavellian curse when spurned by her mentor. Enter COREY, a passionate young nobody, and her professor, MAXINE, an award-winning playwright and living legend of the American theatre. When Maxine shatters Corey's dreams of artistic collaboration after graduation, Corey seeks revenge. At a clairvoyant's den in a violet-lit Dallas strip mall, the young playwright unleashes a life-altering curse on Maxine. Possessed by dark powers and even darker ambitions, Corey follows Maxine to a prestigious playwriting residency in Chicago where the women become fatally entwined. Through three acts, two interludes, and one curse, Corey pushes her mentor toward theatre's haunted margins, where reality begins to crumble. Caroline Macon Fleischer's A Play About A Curse reads like an A24 film. Part psychological horror and part theatrical fever dream, Curse shadows a heroine-turned-villain as she confronts the supernatural power struggle between mentor and protéeacute;gé, learning that to achieve our dreams, someone else must suffer a nightmare.

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9781960988782

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Reviews

""With precise storytelling and a wild blending of forms, Caroline Macon Fleischer amplifies the envy, pride, wrath, and lust bubbling beneath creative collaboration. A Play About A Curse swims through both the psychological acuity of Susan Choi's Trust Exercise and the sinister chill of Fleur Jaeggy's Sweet Days of Discipline on its way toward deeper and stranger waters."" --Martin Seay, author of The Mirror Thief ""A Play About A Curse brilliantly showcases Macon's gifts as both a novelist and a playwright. It's a gripping hybrid narrative about ambition, betrayal, and jealousy, encouraging us to contemplate the timeless question: ""What good is it to gain the whole world but lose our very soul?"" --Loy A. Webb, Playwright of The Light ""In the dust of an old building, the floorboards vibrate, a curtain draws, a scrim passes over, and out slips Caroline Macon Fleischer's genre-agnostic novel, A Play About A Curse. Insidious mentor-mentee relationships take center stage, trading a theatre of absolution for some psychotic bliss. Macon Fleischer probes the question, 'What happens when we become the object of our own contempt?' Heralded by the author's hallucinogenic prose and cutting dialogue, this is a story of players cleaved from a worldly realm, flung from their obsessions, chasing the myths of their own making."" --Lucas Baisch, Playwright

""This inventive novel adopts the structure of a three-act play, but also incorporates swaths of fever dream-like exposition rendered in technicolor prose. A searing caricature of fraught female friendship."" -Kirkus ""Fleischer's thrilling sophomore horror outing (after The Roommate)...keeps the tension taut and the action exciting. Fleischer's stylistic flair and plenty of striking supernatural set pieces make this well worth a look."" --Publishers Weekly ""With precise storytelling and a wild blending of forms, Caroline Macon Fleischer amplifies the envy, pride, wrath, and lust bubbling beneath creative collaboration. A Play About A Curse swims through both the psychological acuity of Susan Choi's Trust Exercise and the sinister chill of Fleur Jaeggy's Sweet Days of Discipline on its way toward deeper and stranger waters."" --Martin Seay, author of The Mirror Thief ""I loved this strange, often disturbing, sometimes funny chimera of a novel. If you, like me, are fascinated and terrified by actors and the theatre, read A Play About a Curse to find your worst and bloodiest fears confirmed, and also to discover/unearth new, bloodier, even worse fears. Yes, A Play About a Curse is about a curse, but it is also about: 1) A notable number of sins, both deadly and venal, 2) relocation and its lures and dangers, 3) the strange and powerful energies inherent in collaboration, 4) lakes, and 5) the deep, dark, messy impulses lurking behind all creative acts. Memorable, queasy, highly recommended."" --Juan Martinez, author of Extended Stay ""A Play About A Curse brilliantly showcases Macon's gifts as both a novelist and a playwright. It's a gripping hybrid narrative about ambition, betrayal, and jealousy, encouraging us to contemplate the timeless question: 'What good is it to gain the whole world but lose our very soul?'"" --Loy A. Webb, playwright of The Light ""In the dust of an old building, the floorboards vibrate, a curtain draws, a scrim passes over, and out slips Caroline Macon Fleischer's genre-agnostic novel, A Play About A Curse. Insidious mentor-mentee relationships take center stage, trading a theatre of absolution for some psychotic bliss. Macon Fleischer probes the question, 'What happens when we become the object of our own contempt?' Heralded by the author's hallucinogenic prose and cutting dialogue, this is a story of players cleaved from a worldly realm, flung from their obsessions, chasing the myths of their own making."" --Lucas Baisch, playwright ""A Play About A Curse is as propulsive as it is sui generis. Macon Fleischer's ability to crawl inside the unraveling brain of its narrator creates a journey so addictive the reader becomes an actor in the play, which is as much about envy as it is about a descent into madness."" --Eliza Bent, writer and performer ""A dark, spiraling descent into the fractured mind of an artist, desperate to be seen. Caroline Macon Fleischer has created something both beautiful and unsettling. This book lingers like a nightmare. What happens when the mentor becomes the muse? A must-read for fans of Black Swan and other psychological horrors with teeth."" --Daniella Pineda, actor in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and writer ""A Play About a Curse is deliciously malicious. A young graduate, feeling unduly jilted by her beloved playwriting professor, trades her own humanity to master her master and sends her teacher tumbling into a whirling pool of madness. Caroline Macon Fleischer's acrobatic prose and genre-crossing storytelling is a seductive swirl of th

Author Information

Caroline Macon Fleischer is an author and theatremaker in Chicago. Her first novel, The Roommate, was a Kindle thriller bestseller in the summer of 2022. As a theatremaker, she's worked as a playwright, dramaturg, and director for companies including Lookingglass Theatre Company, Chicago Children's Theatre, and Chicago Dramatists. She is a member of Poems While You Wait, a collective of poets and their typewriters that writes original poetry on demand. She lives with her husband, son, and an assortment of pets. Find her online @caromacon and www.caromacon.com.

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