New Reads Book Club: Valerie: or, The Faculty of Dreams

The New Reads Book Club focuses on contemporary literature and is hosted by Drawn and Quarterly staff members. The book club meetings take place every 4-6 weeks, and are open to all. For our SEPTEMBER meeting, we will meet at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly (176 Bernard O.) at 7 pm to discuss Valerie: or, The Faculty of Dreams. The evening will be hosted by Librairie Drawn & Quarterly’s own Catherine Debard. Join us for discussion and drinks!

In April 1988, Valerie Solanas―the writer, radical feminist, author of the SCUM Manifesto and would-be assassin of Andy Warhol―was discovered dead at fifty-two in her hotel room, in a grimy corner of San Francisco, alone, penniless, and surrounded by the typed pages of her last writings.
In Valerie, a nameless narrator revisits the room where Solanas died, the courtroom where she was tried and convicted of attempting to murder Andy Warhol, the Georgia wastelands where she spent her childhood and was repeatedly raped by her father and beaten by her alcoholic grandfather, and the mental hospitals where she was shut away.

A leading feminist in Sweden and one of the most acclaimed writers in Scandinavia, Sara Stridsberg here blurs the boundaries between history and fiction, self-making and storytelling, madness and art, love and tragedy. Through imagined conversations and monologues, reminiscences and rantings, she reconstructs this most intriguing and enigmatic of women, reaching back in time to amplify her voice and bring her powerful, heartbreaking story into new light.

**We offer a 20% discount on Valerie: or, The Faculty of Dreams from now until the meeting date.**