I've been really excited to have the opportunity to get the word out about New York-based artist Robert Marshall's electric first novel, A Separate Reality (Carroll & Graf, November 2006) -- described by The Washington Post as "remarkably vivid" and "as good an encapsulation of adolescence as you're likely to read."

Marshall's debut has been variously described as "a failure to come of age story," a pitch-perfect literary assessment of '70s pop culture, and "a novel about the risks and appeal of the desire to be perfect; and the influence of an ex-hippie poet who encourages smoking pot, reading poetry and the writing of Carlos Castaneda." All of this and more is true, and this is one new voice on the fiction scene that you won't want to miss.