The Queen of Tuesday

Nightfall, the Beach at Coney Island

A cloud lifts, and look ­here s Manhattan, tiara-­bright and brash, American initiative written in glitter. It s 1949. Hundreds of cars are driving from the city to the sea. Cadillacs and Packards and wood-­bodied Fords. Snaking along Stillwell Ave, they stretch a tail for miles under a Warner Bros. sky.

People are coming in the tangerine twilight to view a collapse.

Hey, that s your favorite celebrity over there. On the boardwalk, her white shoes scuffed black with sand. (If she s not famous now, just wait.) She s striding ­confidenting ­right into this party. And into the elation of this party. Banners promise or warn A Night You ll Remember. Walking beside the actress, her husband raises his fist. She isn t really sure he s joking.

Earlier, she d been angry enough to throw a glass; he d smashed her compact. Your typical knock-­down-­drag-­out. Her husband s not quite famous yet, either.

And the actress certainly will remember this night. There s a boy in suede gloves who s botching it, failing to reach her. The gloves are lemon-­colored: it s a bright-­colored time. Tonight, the actress will drop into trouble and watch the sparks in their upward flight. And her husband s fists will be used in earnest.

For now, the husband mopes. It s no good you keep insulting me, he says, his accent having its way with the words. I have to know this torch expression. Can you explain carry a torch ?

She says, Just a habit men have of walking around on fire. You recognize her ­a woman who s learned the score. Burning yourself, getting singed, like that.

Another banner: A Party for the Ages ­Elizabeth Trump & Son.

The actress feels chilly. That s Coney Island in April for you. She s also frustratingly unseen. The actress has bumped through life knowing what it is to be ignored, even by quote loved ones. At tonight s party, she wants to be noticed by the husband she loves. But also, especially, by men she

Darin Strauss is the author of the bestselling novels Chang and Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than It Hurts You; the memoir Half a Life, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and a bestselling comic-book series, Olivia Twist. These have been New York Times Notable Books and Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, and NPR best books of the year, among other honors. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Library Association award, and numerous additional prizes, Strauss has been translated into fourteen languages and published in nineteen countries. He is the clinical professor of fiction in the graduate writing program at New York University.

A delight. The New York Times Book Review
 
The best book yet by one of our best writers. The Millions
 
Half memoir and half make-believe, this boisterous novel relates an imagined affair between Lucille Ball . . . and the author s grandfather. . . . A touching account of the sacrifices that Lucille makes to preserve her most genuine relationship: the one between her and the public. The New Yorker
 
An impossibly daring premise for a novel an act of almost Lucy-level audaciousness! . . . exceptionally well told . . . [Darin] Strauss conjures up those heady days . . . with such vibrancy it s impossible not to hope that everything might work out after all. . . . Brilliant. Ron Charles, The Washington Post
 
As in Strauss s other books, the movement here is perpetual and multidirectional; it never stops. . . . The author asserts himself, here as elsewhere in his books, through his rigorously playful approach to language. . . . [The Queen of Tuesday] reads like a dream painted in bold and fearsome strokes. The Boston Globe
 
"Timeless . . . Strauss ingenious and bittersweet fourth novel, The Queen of Tuesday, seems genuinely to lament a love affair that never happened. It d be the perfect 50s screen romance! But Strauss knows what time we re living in. Los Angeles Times
 
A rollicking read. Newsday

Anything Darin Strauss writes is magic. I have been his fan since the beginning of time, and I will be his fan until the sun explodes. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
 
A great read! Jenny Offill, author of Weather
 
The Queen of Tuesday is a beautiful cinematic story. In a gorgeous imagined history of a not long ago world, the novelist Strauss allows us to remember our deeply held wishes to invent our lives and memories for our privately held loves. Like The Great Gatsby, Strauss reminds us here that ghosts unseen