Teaser Tuesdays September 17, 2013

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should be Reading.  Everyone is invited to play along.  Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title and author as well so that others can add the book to their To Be Read list!

September 17, 2013

My Teasers:

This teaser is from page 123 of Haley Tanner’s debut novel Vaclav and Lena.

“Knock, knock.  I am coming in,” Rasia says loudly to the closed door of Vaclav’s bedroom.  Rasia has a new habit of both knocking and saying that she is knocking.  This is a new habit that began when Vaclav became a person taller than she is, singing in the shower in a voice so low that on occasion Rasia hears this voice and thinks, Oh, no, a man has broken into our home and is showering in our shower, a serial killer like the man on the Special Victims Unit television show who has a cleansing ritual that he must do before he brutally kills his victims, and this man is going to come out of the shower and kill me.

From the Publisher:  Vaclav and Lena seem destined for each other.  They meet as children in an ESL class in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.  Vaclav is precocious and verbal.  Lena, struggling with English, takes comfort in the safety of his adoration, his noisy, loving home, and the care of Rasia, his big-hearted mother.  Vaclav imagines their story unfolding like a fairy tale, or the perfect illusion from his treasured Magician’s Almanac, but among the many truths to be discovered in Haley Tanner’s wondrous debut is that happily ever after is never a forgone conclusion.

One day, Lena does not show up for school.  She has disappeared from Vaclav and his family’s lives as if by a cruel magic trick.  For the next seven years Vaclav says good night to Lena without fail, wondering if she is doing the same somewhere.  On the eve of Lena’s seventeenth birthday he finds out.