My New American Life audiobook

Prose does a great job of presenting Americans from an immigrants' point of view. Those of us who have roots here for three or four generations tend to think life and customs here are life and customs period.The Albanian narrator, Lula sees America and Americans with a survivor's eye, tremendous wit and irony. She tells stories, lies, and tells truths as well. She has fled Albania to make a new American life. On the way, she stops off in New Jersey, and provides aid to a family which is shell shocked from the matriarch's disappearance and descent into insanity. Her own strength is derived from surviving traumas in Communist Albania and the losses in her family. She does not provide chicken soup and warm hugs. This is today's story. She nukes frozen pizza for the bereft 17 year old and sits with his abandoned father as he drinks water. She provides the glue for an American family which is unhinged by its own tragedy.Lula is no angel. She is smart, resourceful, sexy and and aching. Part of her American life is just like the readers. Part of it is just Lulu's.

My New American Life is whip-smart funny. Satire is not always easy to pull off on the written page , and Prose does it amazingly well. Her writing, especially of Lula's thoughts, had me cracking up, like this one:"Lula knew that some Americans cheered every time INS agents raided factories and shoved dark little chicken-packagers into the backs of trucks. She'd seen the guys on Fox News calling for every immigrant except German supermodels and Japanese baseball players to be deported, no questions asked."Lula wants desperately to grab a hold of the American dream, but her job as a nanny to an 17-year-old young man leaves her bored and stuck in the suburbs with no friends and nothing to do. Prose makes you feel her stifling suffocation. When the wanna-be Sopranos Albanians show up and ask her to "hold on to" a gun for them, Lula does as she's asked, even though she knows this could lead to trouble for her and her employer and her deportation. Yet, strangely, she cannot say no to them; and besides, it's a little excitement.I usually identify with at least one of the characters in a novel that I read, but I could not identify with anyone in this book, yet that did not stop me from enjoying it. I live in New York City, a city that runs because of its immigrant population, and this book gave me a new perspective on the people who leave their families behind to start a new life elsewhere.Lula misses her homeland; she cries"for her once-beautiful homeland now in the hands of toxic dumpers and sex traffickers and money launderers. She cried for missing her country, for not missing it, for having nothing to miss. She cried for the loneliness and uncertainty of her life among strangers who could still change her mind and make her go home."All of the characters are interesting: sad sacks Mister Stanley and his friend Don (both divorced and lost), young Zeke (I just wanted to hug him and tell him it will be all right), the Albanians (a riot!) and Lula's friend Dunia, who hits the immigrant lottery by finding a rich man to marry.There are so many fantastic scenes- at the restaurant where Lula gets a celebratory citizenship dinner with Zeke, his dad, Don and his caustic daughter, Lula's date with Alvo, the college trip- all are sharp and memorable.Prose successfully combines the comic and the tragic, and throws in some politics, like Don's work with detainees at Guantanemo. Her portrait of American life soon after 9/11 (through Lula's eyes) is vivid and thought-provoking.

I liked this book and the Albanian main character who is trying to figure out American life. Lula is the live-in caretaker for a high school student, a precarious job for her, since everyone she meets assumes that she is sleeping with his father, the man she calls Mister Stanley. The book describes how Lula tries to figure out how to succeed in America. Due to the exigencies of life in Albania, Lula is adept at lying. She finds that it solves many problems and seems to please Mister Stanley and his friend Don, an immigration lawyer. She is grateful for the comfortable home and easy job she has, but is lonely, especially after her best friend, another Albanian, becomes incommunicado. Almost every encounter that Lula has with Stanley and Don is challenging, fraught with the danger that she could lose their good will and then miss her chance to become a permanent resident of the country. But she handles most of these encounters with acumen and self-possession. Lula is a combination of naive newcomer and shrewdly insightful employee who succeeds in her limited role until three Albanian men force their way into her life and she starts yearning for greater freedom. It's not a deep story, but it's not shallow either. Lula is escaping from a miserable society, and by the end of the book, the reader will be rooting for Lula's success and happiness, though we know it will not come easily.

I have loved and hated Francine Prose's books and was pleased that she was back in form for me. Lula, an illegal Albanian immigrant, is a nanny of sorts to a melancholy teen and his more melancholy father, Mr. Stanley. She is sassy, sad, and quite charming in her diffidence. I could see her shrug her shoulders in explaining what life was like first under the Communists in Albania, then the "good guys". Her life in America is filled with excitement for the potential of her new life, boredom with the life she found, and the titillation of three Albanian men who show up on her doorstep knowing a little too much about her. There is nothing deep here but I had a good time.

This was a very different story from what I usually read but very entertaining and easy to read. The story of an immigrant girl and her "new life" in America. Her ideas and opinions of things that happen in this country that are so different and unusual for people from other more oppressed countries. DEfinitely recommend.

Francine Prose dazzles the reader with her finely honed satiric skills in My New American Life, in which she tells the story of Lulu, an Albanian immigrant who arrives in America during the second Bush-Cheny term. While in New York on a tourist visa, Lulu works illegally at a mojita bar where the wait staff takes bets on who will be the first to be deported. With her visa about to expire, Lulu lands a sinecure when she is hired as a companion for a high school senior whose father does not want him to be home alone in a New Jersey suburb. Both the father, a former academic now working on Wall Street, and son are depressed because the wife and mother has developed mental illness and runaway from the family. Lulu speaks English fluently and by playing a little loose with her family history convinces the father that she is refugee of the Balkan wars. He has his friend, a prominent immigration attorney, procure her a work visa. So life is going smoothly until three Albanian tough guys come to visit Lulu one day. This is a very funny book. After growing up under the most repressive Communist regime in the world, Lulu’s view of American culture—from organic grocery stores to college admissions—is hilarious. Prose’s delicious mix of satire, well developed characters, and galloping narrative kept me turning the pages very late at night. Although the book addresses serious issues regarding immigration and government restrictions, it is never didactic. [I won this book as part of the First Reads Program.]

My new American Life is the world of a young woman named Lulu. She is discovering an America that Columbus only dreamed of. A bit of humor and a lot of irony oozes from every pore of this narrator and new found gem of acharacter. She is a caretaker of a young boy and perhaps his biggest fan but his life is changing and she is showing him a few possible ways of getting around the rules of a well intended but clueless father. This is also about the distance from New York and the Balkans and about the distance from New York to New Jersey. The distances are about equal. You don't believe me just ask Lulu.

Superb...Prose sets up a compare/contrast between the US and Albania (there's more in common than you'd think, especially in the Bush years, when the story takes place), but the story is so compelling, the characters so interesting, and the writing so fluid, that you don't notice. Funny, insightful, heartbreaking, sexy, and, ultimately, hopeful.

I can't remember who suggested this book, but I really enjoyed it. Light enough to be a quick read, but substantial enough to be worth it. When the book ended, I wanted a sequel -- not because the author left me hanging, but because I liked Lula's life so much I wanted to be part of more of it.

Lula, an Albanian over-staying her visitor's visa, looks at W's/Cheney's America with a cynical, wondering eye and fits her story to maximize her advantage. She becomes a caregiver to a high school senior, depends on her employer, connects to questionable fellow Albanians, and weighs self-preservation and a desire to live the American dream. Very funny-- and thought-provoking."No doubt about it, there was more freedom here. You just had to watch your back, and not shoot off your mouth or do anything stupid that would get you locked up or kicked out." p. 54

Held my attentionThis novel had the feel of a memoir. I was surprised to find it was fiction. Characters and situations well-drawn and believable.

Not the usual type of book I read, but it was a quick read that kept my interest and had substance that I thought about after I was finished.

Often think she is an outstanding author.

In the final scene our heroine, who cannot drive, is stuck in traffic in an almost certainly stolen SUV, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, leaving behind a home where she cannot stay, but where they aren't ready for her to leave, towards an apartment where she'll be able to stay - at most - a few months.Lula is an Albanian emigre during the presidency of Bush the Younger post 911, precisely at the time when America was at its most xenophobic. After working illegally as a waitress she lands work as a part time nanny to the teenage son of an investment banker abandonned by his mentally ill wife. Things seem to be going well - or as well as Lula could hope - when three of her countrymen show up and ask her to hold onto a gun for them.An immigrant perspective on the United States provides an ideal satiric vantage point, as writers have long known. Prose supplies a nice additional touch by making Lula herself a story teller. At the behest of her employer and the lawyer who's working to secure her a greencard - two liberals of the sort naively eager to hear tales of hardship - Lula writes "true stories" of Albania, fabricated patchworks of history and fairytale. It's the sort of thing that happens everyday to people of all ethnicities asked to "perform" their identities. Lula spins out improbable accounts in writing as well as conversation, withholding the real but equally improbable truth.The novel is funny, charming, and well-written, and Prose keeps us dangling at the edges of things that don't quite happen: affairs that don't quite come off, dysfunctional families that manage to stay on just this side of functionality, guns the fire, but not fatally. And truth to tell, the experience is at times frustrating for the reader - I found myself longing for something more, something richer, something greater at stake, but then at the end - unaccountably, to me - the novel comes together in an entirely fulfilling way. In the last scene of Lula driving across a bridge, I realized that Prose's formless story catches the essence a New American Life, of American Life, and maybe Life in General: hopping from stone to stone, always unfinished, always provisional, making it up as we go along.http://manmartin.blogpspot.com

My New American Life: A Novel by Francine Prose is one I might have actually picked up on my own. Actually, I'd have hesitated since I have a bias against authors with more than two or three novels under their belt so it is cool that this is one of the books that I got as an advance copy from Harper. The book's main character is Lula, an immigrant from Albania. We find her working for a well-to-do man in the NYC suburbs as a caretaker for his son who is 17 and really doesn't need any care (Mom has left due to mental issues). The father has also hooked Lula up with a lawyer to work on getting her legal status. In both the legal world and in general, Lula tends to tell stories that people would expect...they aren't true (or happened generations ago) but they conform to American assumptions about life in other nations and playing on these stereotypes gets Lula sympathy and seems like a bit of amusement for her as well. Early on in the novel, Lula's very routine life is interrupted by three Albanian men showing up and asking her to hide a gun for them. This ramps up the cultural undercurrents of the novel that look at loyalty and the similarities and differences between the US and nations we assume are worlds away. The home life of Lula's employer provides further evidence of the theme that things are rarely as they appear or as we'd assume.I enjoyed the book. I'd likely put it at 3.5 stars but it gave me enough to think about that I am fine rounding up to four (of five...goodreads and amazon use five stars and don't allow half-stars). At times, I got frustrated with Lula. I also disliked some of the overdone plot twists and mini storylines (the son's bizarre visit to a college seemed like a random short story the author just felt like inserting). But it was generally a fun and thought-provoking read without ever becoming preachy (a fault shared by many books that take a critical eye to modern America).

Lula is just a girl who lied to INS about wanting to visit her (non-existent) aunt in Detroit so she could get out of Albania. So what if her old Albanian life didn't actually involve brushes with genocide? And who cares if her parents died more because of her father's drunk-driving than the conflict? Lying about these sorts of things has become a vital part of her new American life.The major plot-moving lie is one of omission. Lula doesn't tell her employer of her live-in job as a nanny/friend of high school senior Zeke that three Albanian thugs, or that she is currently hiding a gun in her underwear drawer for one of them. Funny how her old Albanian life keeps popping up, mostly in the form of Alvo, "the Cute One."There are many other lies, mostly in the form of Lula's writing. Her boss, and his childhood best friend, now an immigration lawyer, encourage Lula to write about her experiences. Mostly what she writes are rehashed Balkan folktales, with introductions which indicate that an obscure relation is the main character. Honestly, I enjoyed these stories most out of this book. They're a little bit of escapism from the post-911 America that Francine Prose captures in My New American Life, they also add a nice post-modern twist to the novel. If you're reading this novel primarily for Lula's story, you may be a bit disappointed, after all, her life revolves around making crappy pizzas for a seventeen-year-old boy who doesn't want to eat his vegetables. Neither is this a romance story between Lula and Alvo, so if you're looking for that you're once again in the wrong place. The strength of this novel is in its lies more than the complications which arise as a result of them.