Why Did I Ever

After a ten-year silence, Mary Robison has emerged with a novel so beguiling and funny that it has brought critics and her live-reading audiences to their feet. Why Did I Ever takes us along on the darkest of private journeys. The story, told by a woman named Money Breton, is submitted like a furious and persuasive diary-a tale as fierce and taut as its fictional teller.

Mary Robison was born in Washington, D.C. She graduated from Johns Hopkins, where she studied with John Barth. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, an O. Henry Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. She is the author of three previous novels, Oh! (1981), Subtraction (1991), and Why Did I Ever (2001), and of four story collections, Days (1979), An Amateur's Guide to the Night (1983), Believe Them (1988), and Tell Me (2002). Robison has written for Hollywood and has been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1977. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.