Mona Simpson, professor of English and one of UCLA’s most celebrated faculty authors, has published a new novel, "Casebook" (Knopf), elucidating the inner workings of a family in Santa Monica, California.
Simpson's “captivating sixth novel,” as described by the Washington Post, opens with a young boy’s pursuit to discover his parent’s elaborate secrets. Equipping this boyish narrator, Miles, with the curiosity to delve into his families furtively kept secrets, Simpson traces the rise and fall of an American family that appears “typical” at face value.
Her work has received many awards, including a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her first novel, "Anywhere But Here" (1996) was the basis of a 1999 film by the same name that starred Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon.
