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American Mermaid Paperback – March 21, 2023

by Julia Langbein (Author)
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 242 ratings
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A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR “Sublime.” —New York Times Book Review A brilliantly funny debut novel that follows a writer lured to Los Angeles to adapt her feminist mermaid novel into a big-budget action film, who believes her heroine has come to life to take revenge for Hollywood’s violations.

“Brilliantly sharp, funny, and thought-provoking, the gripping story of a woman trying to find her way in our chaotic world.” —Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe

Broke English teacher Penelope Schleeman is as surprised as anyone when her feminist novel American Mermaid becomes a best-seller. Lured by the promise of a big payday, she quits teaching and moves to L.A. to turn the novel into an action flick with the help of some studio hacks. But as she’s pressured to change her main character from a fierce, androgynous eco-warrior to a teen sex object in a clamshell bra, strange things start to happen. Threats appear in the screenplay; siren calls lure Penelope’s co-writers into danger. Is Penelope losing her mind, or has her mermaid come to life, enacting revenge for Hollywood’s violations?

American Mermaid follows a young woman braving the casual slights and cruel calculations of a ruthless industry town, where she discovers a beating heart in her own fiction, a mermaid who will fight to move between worlds without giving up her voice. A hilarious story about deep things, American Mermaid asks how far we’ll go to protect the parts of ourselves that are not for sale.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by LitHub

“Sublime…Langbein intertwines Penny’s story with chapters from her own novel, and this book-within-a-book structure allows us to mourn the gap between the novel Penny has written and the version she’s told will make a good movie…Langbein’s novel considers how we decide who owns a story — and, far more compelling, how we know when a story succeeds.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Wildly inventive, this book will get you thinking about artistic integrity as it elicits plenty of snarf-yourself laughs.”
—Real Simple

“Funny, smart, and irresistible. . . [American Mermaid] is about striving for success, bearing the costs that come with it and finding your voice again – even when you’re the one writing the story. I laughed out loud.”
—GMA. com

“Clever. . . Langbein has written a sincere novel about art, Hollywood, sexuality, feminism, global warming, the cultural zeitgeist—and managed to do so while entertaining with a modern voice and a light touch of humor.”
—Chicago Review of Books

“[A] hilarious novel [about] something serious: a young woman trying to have her voice heard and find her place in a world that seems bent on diminishing her. This story within a story is a shrewd, sardonic look at Hollywood movie making.”
—Associated Press

“A funny debut that asks readers to contemplate ambition and the cost of selling out.”
—Zibby Mag

“A comedy of wordplay. A superhero adventure. A Hollywood takedown. A hoot and a half. American Mermaid is all of these, and more. So witty and marvelous you won’t be able to put it down. So pick it up!”
—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost

“I was hooked from the first page. American Mermaid is brilliantly sharp, funny, and thought-provoking, the gripping story of a woman trying to find her way in our chaotic world.”
—Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Circe and The Song of Achilles

“American Mermaid is shapeshifting novel composed of wildly divergent elements—a biting Hollywood satire, a magical realist book-within-a-book, and a moody meditation on identity and selling out. It probably shouldn’t work, but it succeeds brilliantly, thanks to Julia Langbein’s tonal control and wicked sense of humor. This is a a debut novel of unusual ambition and scope.”
—Tom Perrotta, author of Tracy Flick Can’t Win and Mrs. Fletcher

“American Mermaid is, like a mermaid herself, a beautiful mix of two things. It is a brilliantly funny and perfectly modern satire, as well as being an elegant exploration of soulfulness, longing and belonging, and the ungovernable wildness of nature herself. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and I loved it.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of City of Girls

“Every time I picked up this book I both laughed out loud and sighed in admiration. Deeply hilarious, delightfully strange, intricately constructed and remarkably satisfying, American Mermaid is sensational.”
—Julia May Jonas, author of Vladimir

“An absolute weirdo masterpiece. With her debut, Julia Langbein pulls off an impressive tonal tightrope walk that would send a lesser writer stumbling to the ground. American Mermaid manages to be so many things at once—a zany and savage satire about Hollywood, a tale of magical realism, and an aching story about what comes after you achieve your dream, how the depths of your ambition can swallow you whole. This novel is both a pleasure to read and signals the arrival of an exciting new writer to watch.”
—Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl

“A salty, sleek and scheming satire, American Mermaid considers dangerous and alluring myths surrounding creative control, compromise and complicity. Told with a caricaturist’s energy and dynamism, Langbein’s layered narratives gleefully expose Hollywood’s ritualized humiliations. Full of skewering, mischievous precision, it is a glittering, baited hook of a novel.”
—Eley Williams, author of The Liar’s Dictionary

“Filled with wit and more than few laugh-out-loud moments…A downright delightful debut novel.”
—Booklist (starred review)
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  4. Publication date
    March 21, 2023
  5. Dimensions
    6.26 x 1.18 x 9.17 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0385550014
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0385550017
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (March 21, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0385550014
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0385550017
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.3 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.26 x 1.18 x 9.17 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 242 ratings

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Julia Langbein

Julia Langbein

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Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
3.7 out of 5
242 global ratings
Quirky novel about making it
4 Stars
Quirky novel about making it
Book Review: American Mermaid by Julia LangbeinAmerican Mermaid is an contemporary novel about a debut author (and high school teacher) that moves to Hollywood to adapt her book into a screenplay.When the book opens Penelope Schleeman is a thirty-three year old tenth grade English teacher and debut author. Her novel about a wheelchair bound woman who discovers she’s a mermaid (after rolling her wheelchair off a pier) has become a hit and Hollywood is calling. The fees for selling the rights and adapting the screenplay mean that she can finally pay for the double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery she needs after testing positive for the BRCA gene. During the day she’s paired up with two experienced Hollywood scriptwriters who are slowly chipping away a her feminist mermaid story and making it more palatable while she spends her nights at Hollywood parties trying to make connections but often feeling like the odd woman out.In a lot of ways this is a fish out of water story (pardon the pun) where an east coast educator is plucked out of nowhere to live in an executive apartment in Culver City and move through the rarefied air of creative types. Her attempts at humor on a podcast anger her family, a quick pee in the ocean ends her up in a riptide and she is skewered by a group of smart and confident teenage girls in a basement. But every scene with Penelope has a sly sense of humor that you can’t help but laugh along with. My favorite scenes are the ones with her sister questioning Penelope’s sexuality and when her writing team decides to exclude the book’s scenes of “sperm harvesting” from the screenplay. The hardest part to swallow are the actual chapters from her book which seems like a very unlikely hit even as a fictional book within a book.Overall, this a memorable and hilarious story about a smart and funny woman trying to navigate Hollywood.
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Top reviews from the United States

Lipsticktoliterature
4.0 out of 5 stars A book with in a book!
Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2023
I saw the word Mermaid and I KNEW I needed to read it! What can I say, I'm easily intrigued. It was a book about a novel the FMC wrote. A book within a book y'all!!! Penelope wrote a book about Sylvia who is wheelchair bound because she is unable to use her legs. Her legs aren't legs but a tail! As Penelope is turning her book into film changes are being made to her book and weird things start happening. She is convinced she has basically brought Sylvia to life.

It sounds like a thriller but it isn't. I would classify it is traditional fiction. I felt like I could relate to Penelope even though I am not a writer or prior teacher. The author did a great job writing her character. When Sylvia found out who she really was and started getting confidence and strength in herself it was pretty awesome!

As I always say I NEVER READ THE SYNOPSIS. It is sooo much better to go in to books blind IMO. I enjoyed every minute of this book and am so glad I had the chance to read it early!! Thank you to @doubleday & AUTHOR for an eARC copy of this book.
One person found this helpful
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Joyfullyoverbooked
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2023
Verified Purchase
A book within a book trope, with a teacher as the main character. I was sold from the start! This book sort of reminded me of the Steve Martin movie, Roxanne. Have you seen that?
Penelope, a high school teacher who doesn't make nearly enough money (sigh - the truth of all us teachers), has written a book, which gets published. She writes the story of Sylvia, a mermaid made by human scientists, and tells the story of her life from infancy to her provocative teenage years. Penelope's book gets sold to a Hollywood agency, and her world changes profoundly. She leaves her quiet Connecticut teaching life, and heads to busy LA . Soon enough, Penelope's world seems to spiral as Sylvia's takes on a whole new life.
This book was fantastic and I cannot recommend it enough!
7 people found this helpful
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J Hawn
3.0 out of 5 stars Just Okay
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2023
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This book was okay, very blurred lines between knowing what was real and imagined by the main character. Many of the premises of the book were also not my favorite.
2 people found this helpful
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Kenneth W. Gardner
2.0 out of 5 stars Starts strong, but very disappointing; I wanted to love this satiric novel
Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2024
Disclaimer: As a fellow Chicagoan, I wanted to love this novel. As an indie author, I have written some satiric erotic mermaid novels (examples of which she referred to when seeing what other people write our lovely, but seductive and dangerous or naive sea sirens). I identified with her about the problems of writing original mermaid romances. However, I had a difficult time dealing with her protagonist's problems with Hollywood hacks adapting her mermaid creation to a visual media. I just had the feeling that have read this plotline of art versus an audience pleasing industry many times before. It is almost as old as the legend of Atargatis, the first mermaid. The book is well-written, but I wished it was better. I guess since I love mermaids, I want books about them to be about them. I would have preferred to have red the mermaid novel the writer invented for her battle with the Gods of Hollywood and Vine.
2 people found this helpful
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TBS
4.0 out of 5 stars A Fish Always Out of Water or Mermaid in a Barrel?
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2023
High school English teacher Penny Schleeman is on the brink of penury when her fantastical novel about Sylvia, a repressed powerful mermaid, hugely takes off due to the twin powers of social media and influencer culture. This happens when her book randomly pops up on the nightstand of an Instagram celebrity. Soon afterward, Penny is swept into LA, into a book to movie deal where she is paired with a seasoned writing dude duo, and into a business relationship with Danielle, a callous, zealous film agent. Danielle, encourages Penny to lead a “boss bitch” life comprised of showing up at the right parties, wearing the right clothes, terrorizing wait staff, and “paying people to pay people.” And as Penny dutifully follows this advice, the venal screenwriting bros take an ax and auger to her novel and go after the body, soul and heart of Sylvia, turning her from a feminist water warrior into a sexy doomed teenage Disney caricature that must die, because it plays better than targeting men and trying to restore ecological balance.

Langbein cleverly alternates sections between Penny’s life and Penny’s novel, also titled American Mermaid, Sylvia’s origin story. Wheelchair-bound Sylvia, adored by her mother and controlled by her brilliant mega-wealthy inventor father and her physician, has no idea she is a mermaid, so her discoveries of all the flavors of betrayal do not end well…for some. Sylvia’s story is also what propels Penny’s transit through the LA round of industry gatherings, events, promotions, and pitiless editing by her co-writers. For the most part, the writing is compelling in both narratives. What bubbles to the surface is the tension between Penny’s authorial frustration in trying to preserve the integrity of Sylvia with Penny’s growing complacency as she plumbs the vacuous surfaces of Hollywood parties and players (including her guilty pleasure at finally being able to afford the expensive brand of shampoo). But something strange is happening to the script and to those that would script it. As the rewrites begin to take on a life of their own or perhaps of Sylvia’s, Penny’s life seems to be echoing parts of her book, going beyond ocean injuries and father issues. The convergence of these two stories is complex, and is complicated by a wall behind the fourth wall; the scathing critique of the novel “American Mermaid” by a private school teenager at a bookstore reading. And the structural twist, when this teenager gets absorbed into the narrative of Penny’s experience, cunningly defies every expectation of where the story will lead. But although the combined weight, twisted POVs, and unanswered questions of these narratives eventually overpowers the conclusion (or conclusions), there is much to be appreciated here. Langbein excels at acid rain scrutiny of the patois and casual cruelty of the elite and entitled and especially of teenagers of all ilk. The result is consistently hilarious and at times heartbreaking and the same can be said for her expansive descriptions of the landscapes of the very rich and those that serve them or reside in another galaxy far far away and teach for a pittance in a public school. I appreciated this introduction to the worlds of Penny and Sylvia and to the piercing comic insight of Julia Langbein.
5 people found this helpful
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Ilse
5.0 out of 5 stars Good summer reading
Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2023
Verified Purchase
American Mermaid gets ***** from me. This novel by Julia Langbein is not a children’s fairy tale, even though “mermaid” might make you think so. Langbein entertains you, but she will also make you think. The book is funny, very funny indeed, but it has some deep themes that in fact make this book perfect for book clubs. The structure of the novel is unusual: it is a book in a book. We get two stories running one inside the other. We want to know what happens to the central character who is in a wheelchair. We want to keep reading.
Langbein is a superb writer and her language is masterful. Every word has a place. If you were to get just one book for the summer, this should be the one. You would not be disappointed.
4 people found this helpful
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