Proof of Progress

A witty and sharp-tongued novel about a writer and actress who finally comes to write the manuscript that is thirty-seven years overdue – for fans of We All Want Impossible Things and The Correspondent. Maria Astorini, once late-night talk show darling, is having a moment. The B-list actress has survived deaths, divorces, a famous mother, a Hollywood blacklist, a string of public embarrassments, an aging face, financial ruin, an empty nest, a difficult best friend, and a worldwide pandemic. Now, she’s back and bigger than ever. A small, unexpected role has heightened her celebrity status and propelled her, at age sixty-five, into the limelight. And then, along comes the call Maria has spent decades avoiding. It’s her publisher asking, ‘Where is that book?’ But Maria hasn’t been able to write a book about her life – she’s been too busy living it. To finally fulfil her contract, Maria writes, or attempts to write, a pile of pages meant to vaguely resemble the book she promised to deliver nearly four decades earlier. In a series of bite-sized anecdotes, she candidly recalls her past, chronicling the significant, and insignificant, moments of her full, funny and extraordinarily unpredictable life.