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Proof of Progress

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Proof of Progress

By: Elizabeth Castellano
Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer
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A witty and sharp-tongued novel about a writer and actress who finally comes to write the manuscript that is thirty-seven years overdue – for fans of We All Want Impossible Things and The Correspondent.

Maria Astorini, once late-night talk show darling, is having a moment. The B-list actress has survived deaths, divorces, a famous mother, a Hollywood blacklist, a string of public embarrassments, an aging face, financial ruin, an empty nest, a difficult best friend, and a worldwide pandemic. Now, she’s back and bigger than ever. A small, unexpected role has heightened her celebrity status and propelled her, at age sixty-five, into the limelight. And then, along comes the call Maria has spent decades avoiding. It’s her publisher asking, ‘Where is that book?’

But Maria hasn’t been able to write a book about her life – she’s been too busy living it. To finally fulfil her contract, Maria writes, or attempts to write, a pile of pages meant to vaguely resemble the book she promised to deliver nearly four decades earlier.

In a series of bite-sized anecdotes, she candidly recalls her past, chronicling the significant, and insignificant, moments of her full, funny and extraordinarily unpredictable life. Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Women's Fiction Funny Witty
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Critic reviews

‘I loved this book, filled with deliciously nutty, bite-sized vignettes that go down so easy. Like Grace Paley, Elizabeth Castellano is a master of low-key humour refracted through an eye for the absurd. Her voice is cynical without turning hopeless, comedic but never straying into satire. Pure pleasure.’ (Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Wreck)
‘The superb Elizabeth Castellano has written a delicious, hilarious, and completely original (fictional) memoir by an actress who has to honour a book contract from 40 years ago. And it’s a doozy. The components of a complicated life – love, family, and history, unspool in surprise, delight, heartache, and pain. I didn’t want this novel to end.’ (Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The View From Lake Como)
‘Like some gorgeous literary hybrid of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel meets Hacks in the best possible way ... This is a brilliant, poignant, hilarious, heartbreaking, delightful ride that should not be missed.’ (Jessica Soffer, bestselling author of This Is a Love Story)
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