Lydia Netzer: Shine Shine Shine

“There are certain novels that are just twisty, delightfully so. Shine, Shine, Shine is one. In this first novel, Lydia Netzer takes a hard look at being completely human through the eyes of two people who are kinda not … Shine, Shine, Shine may ask an old question. But Netzer’s answer to how to be who you are is fresh from the heart.”

“Lydia Netzer’s marvelous debut novel introduces an unusual couple dealing with extraordinary challenges. When a car accident forces Sunny to confront the past that she hides under a blond wig, her genius astronaut husband, Maxon, is distracted by the fact that he’s on his way to the moon. An original story of life’s unpredictability and the cosmic power of love.”

“Netzer’s first novel, the wacky, touching and deliciously readable ‘Shine Shine Shine,’ draws heavily on her own unconventional life … this unassuming novelist … is the ‘it’ girl of contemporary literature.”

“[Sunny and Maxon’s] peculiarities form an endearing story in Shine Shine Shine , Norfolk resident Lydia Netzer’s first — and amazingly inventive — novel. […] Netzer’s munificence of spirit lights her story with compassion. […] Shine Shine Shine transcends not only geography, whether in Burma, Pennsylvania, Norfolk or outer space, but also the science and the struggles, the weirdness and the woe; it aims straight for the heart and the humanity that unites us all. Netzer, whose imagination knows no limits, infuses her debut with love — and reminds us that normalcy can be vastly overrated.”

“This is a novel about the strangeness of being human. Lydia Netzer says she wrote it when she was pregnant with her first child and feeling "paralysed with fear that I was too weird, too self-absorbed, too unskilled to have a child, and that whatever baby had the bad luck to be born of my uterus would be permanently scarred by my failings". Hopefully, she feels better now. Or at least, a lot less alone in her imagined weirdness. After meeting Sunny and Maxon, I know I do.”

“ Shine, Shine, Shine is a novel … but ‘Shine, Shine, Shine’ could easily refer to Netzer’s writing abilities, the way she handles the craft of storytelling, and the way her novel captures and holds the reader’s attention… Netzer is a master storyteller. She leads the reader through a landscape full of beauty and charged with pitfalls, actual and emotional, while holding your eyes to the page, and your fingers itching to turn to the next page.”

“At its considerable heart, Shine Shine Shine is about birth, and as such it is profoundly a feminine novel. Netzer keeps the novel nicely balanced and accessible to male readers, however, by dissociating birth from purely biological terms and recasting it as psychological, spiritual, sexual and technological. It’s a heady plateful to be sure, but Netzer handles it with a strong voice.”

“I can’t say enough good things about SHINE SHINE SHINE, and it’s almost impossible to put the book down once you crack it open. Well-paced, well-plotted, and told with a fresh, lyrical and bold narrative style, Netzer’s debut novel is compelling, smart, strange and enjoyable. It shines as brightly as Sunny’s bald head and the luminous stars Maxon sees in space.”

“Narrator Joshilyn Jackson provides an animated performance of this unique novel whose characters come alive with her pacing and precise articulation. She smoothly transitions from the placid tones of the protagonist, Sunny, a bald super-wife and mother extraordinaire, to the staccato, robotic voice of Sunny’s autistic child. As Sunny’s astronaut husband, who is floating in space, she uses a dry, analytical-sounding tone. For a tacky broadcast anchorman, she provides an exaggerated voice, and for the family’s Stepford-like neighbors, she uses spaced-out tones. Jackson’s dynamic character portrayals capture the freshness of Netzer’s out-of-this-world story.”

“ Shine Shine Shine is an exquisitely written debut novel about family. All of Netzer’s characters are quirky and unique, as well as damaged. Not every novel features a bald Caucasian woman, born in Burma, who is married to a rocket scientist on the autism spectrum. Even so, Shine Shine Shine is never quirky for the sake of quirkiness — Sunny, Maxon and all of the supporting characters are fully fledged and realistic so that they draw the reader in almost immediately with their strong and life-like voices. A story of personal growth and discovery that is unlike any you have read before, Shine Shine Shine will not fail to entertain and move you.”

“A funny, compelling love story from the freshest voice I’ve heard in years. Shine Shine Shine picked me up and left me changed in ways I never expected. Intelligent, emotional, and relentlessly new, Netzer answers questions you didn’t know you were already asking and delivers an unforgettable take on what it means to love, to be a mother, and to be human.”

“From the icy dead surface of the moon to the hot center of the human heart, Lydia Netzer’s debut novel takes you on a rocket ride that will rattle your bones. Part science fiction, part pure magic of the human kind, Netzer makes a book that is wholly her own, and endlessly fascinating. At every turn, you think she cannot astonish you again, and then she does it one more time. And then again and again and again. This is an astounding first novel by a writer who is unique in her immense gifts.”

“Creating one of the most compelling protagonists I’ve read in a long time, Lydia Netzer manages to capture the outsider in each of us. Whether looking at the moon, a child, the suburban landscape, or the face in the mirror, Netzer shows us something we’ve never seen before, something we thought we knew. A beautifully written story where the exception proves the rule: the things that seem to divide us are, ultimately, the very things that unite us.”

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

SHINE SHINE SHINE. Copyright © 2012 by The Netzer Group LLC. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Cover design by Rodrigo Corral design

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Netzer, Lydia.

Shine shine shine / Lydia Netzer. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-250-00707-0 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-01507-5 (e-book)

1. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. 2. Accidents—Fiction. 3. Family secrets—Fiction. 4. Marital conflict—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3614.E528S55 2012

813’.6—dc23

2012007426

eISBN 9781250015075

First Edition: July 2012