Impersonation

A novel that wrestles with the ways that women are hamstrung by maternal demands and social expectations, showing the impossibility of doing it all, as a single mother is hired to ghostwrite a memoir for an aspiring politician and it takes both of them combined to be the ideal successful woman.

By turns revealing, hilarious, dishy, and razor-sharp, Impersonation lives in that rarest of sweet spots: the propulsive page-turner for people with high literary standards. Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers Allie Lang is a professional ghostwriter and a perpetually broke single mother to a young boy. Lana Breban is a powerhouse lawyer, economist, and advocate for women s rights. With aspirations of running for office, Lana and her staff have decided she needs help softening her public image. That s when Allie is hired to write Lana s memoir about her life as a mother. Allie believes she knows the drill: she has learned how to inhabit the lives of others and tell their stories better than they can. But soon Allie s childcare arrangements unravel; she falls behind on her rent; her subject, Lana, is frustratingly aloof; and Allie s boyfriend decides to go on a road trip toward self-discovery. As a writer for hire and a mother, Allie has gotten too used to being accommodating. At what point will she speak up for all that she deserves?Impersonation tells a timely, insightful, and bitingly funny story of ambition, motherhood, and class.