The World of Rae English — Lucy Rosenthal

Fiction. THE WORLD OF RAE ENGLISH is set in the sixties -- the era of Mad Men -- relocated from Manhattan to Iowa City. This second novel by Lucy Rosenthal is about a young woman who is recovering from a marriage to a disgraced politician. Once a rising political star, he has been brought down in a scandal and packed off to prison. After this, Rae English abandons New York for the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop where she hopes to find herself as a writer and to investigate the possibilities of romance in the heartland. Funny, wryly observed and tinged with heartache, this is an unputdownable novel written in a brilliant voice that is at once tender and whip smart.