What Has Become of You: A Novel by Jan Elizabeth Watson (English) Paperback Book

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Aspiring writer Vera Lundy hasn't entirely overcome her own adolescence when she agrees to teach at a tony private school. A recent murder has already put their small New England town on edge when Vera bonds with a student who's eerily reminiscent of her younger self.What if a teacher's most promising pupil is also her most dangerous?Aspiring writer Vera Lundy hasn't entirely overcome her own adolescence when she agrees to teach at a tiny private school. A recent murder has already put their small New England town on edge when Vera bonds with a student who's eerily reminiscent of her younger self. Amid a growing sense of menace, Vera finds herself in the vortex of danger-and suspicion.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Author Biography

Jan Elizabeth Watson received her MFA from Columbia University. She lives in Maine.

Review

Prase for What Has Become of You"A precocious teenager. A teacher who can't quite grow up. What Has Become of You is a suspenseful and tightly plotted thriller filled with vivid and memorable characters, each with her own compelling voice." –Alafair Burge, author of If You Were Here, Long Gone, and the Ellie Hatcher series"Part gloss on The Catcher in the Rye and part millennial The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, What Has Become of You is that rare beast: a page-turner that asks dark, difficult questions about the state of contemporary American society." –Joanne Smith Rakoff, author of A Fortunate Age"Watson's twisty plot speeds with page-turner momentum, but what's likely to stick with you are the complex characters of Vera and Jensen, who are, by turns, vulnerable, flawed, and surprising, bravely struggling to rewrite the stories of their lives." –Publishers Weekly, starred review

Review Quote

Prase for What Has Become of You "A precocious teenager. A teacher who can't quite grow up. What Has Become of You is a suspenseful and tightly plotted thriller filled with vivid and memorable characters, each with her own compelling voice." Alafair Burge, author of If You Were Here, Long Gone, and the Ellie Hatcher series

Excerpt from Book

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.*** Copyright © 2014 by Jan Elizabeth Watson Chapter One Standing amid the library stacks, Vera Lundy thumbed through an anthology of contemporary essays, stopping at one of her favorites-- "Goodbye to All That," by Joan Didion--and read the first line, which she already knew by heart: "It is easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends." A neat, pat sentence, Vera thought, but not entirely true. Sometimes beginnings are less clear-cut than endings; sometimes, when speaking of significant events, their points of origin are not so easy to locate. She wondered if she might be able to elaborate on this idea in a future lesson plan, putting it in a real-world context that her students could relate to. The recent arrest of a local man named Ritchie Ouelette for the killing of an eleven-year-old girl, for example--would this be considered a beginning or an ending? She supposed that would depend on whom you asked. She was about to put the book back in its proper place when the librarian with the wobbly-wheeled book cart stopped her, saying: "Please don''t reshelve that. Return any unwanted items to the circulation desk." As though apprehended in the middle of a far more serious offense, Vera froze, holding the book at upper shelf level. "Oh, I''m sorry," she said, taking stock of the librarian, whom she saw on at least a twice-weekly basis: crisp iron-gray hair; black horn-rimmed glasses; turtleneck under a shapeless denim jumper that seemed to be the unofficial, no-nonsense uniform of all New England librarians over a certain age. "I was putting it back in the right spot, if that makes it any better." The librarian''s expression grew frostier, and she reiterated "We ask that all unwanted items be returned to the circulation desk" with such grim finality that Vera felt chastened. The librarian steered her rumbling cart in the other direction. Vera was sure the woman knew her by sight, knew her to be a respectful library patron--a regular, even, who returned her books well before their due dates--but she always regarded her with the same lack of recognition. Perhaps that was just her way. But Vera was sure that this librarian was dismissive of her because of her choice in reading materials. She was always requesting true-crime books from interlibrary loan--the more lurid in content, the better--though this all fell within the framework of research: Vera was writing a manuscript of her own, an account of a homicide dating back to her freshman year in high school. The other possibility was that the librarian mistook her for a kid. Vera was petite and round-faced, with certain demure, girlish qualities and a bit of teenage insouciance thrown in to further muddy the picture. In reality, however, she was nearly forty years old--a fact she kept from everyone but her immediate family, who already knew the truth. It did no harm, she reasoned, to tell everyone else that she was thirty-five. Thirty-five seemed a good age to stick with for a while. She pored over the new arrivals on the library shelf one last time, contemplating the possibility of adding a fifth book to her haul, but decided to restrict it to four this week: the copy of The Catcher in the Rye that had been the purpose of her trip, two true-crime books about cannibal killers, and an obscure but promising novel about a Victorian poisoner. Four was a good number, to her thinking. She''d once read that in some cultures the number four is regarded as unlucky-- superstitiously avoided as the number thirteen is avoided in the Western world--but Vera''s superstitions were selective at best. Stuffing the newly borrowed books into her tote bag, she stepped outside and was pleased to find the weather had improved since she''d first set out; the bank sign next door read 48 degrees, which would make for an unusually temperate walk home. In Vera''s mind, a world where the temperature constantly read 48 degrees would be all but perfect: just cool enough to necessitate a thick coat and a hat, but warm enough to keep her from shivering. The thick coat and hat were important, Vera thought, because they offered her a camouflage or subterfuge she didn''t have in the warmer days of spring and summer; she liked being covered up, and she liked knowing she could run errands with uncombed hair or the same dirty T-shirt she''d slept in without anyone being the wiser. In such a state, Vera could almost blend in with certain denizens of her town, for Dorset, Maine, was a place where liberal-minded college kids coexisted with the toothless and the unwashed; the hip small businesses and chichi restaurants flourished on the same blocks as pawn shops and bodegas in such disrepair that the hipster kids didn''t dare wander into them. Self-satisfied middle-class people who owned or rented historic brownstones lived alongside those in housing projects. In truth, Vera felt she had little in common with any of Dorset''s residents, yet it was Dorset where she had made her home after a failed attempt to make peace with her hometown of Bond Brook. Reaching her apartment building, she unlocked the door, climbed three flights, and let herself into her studio apartment. Vera thought of it as a bed-sit--one room, and a small one at that--yet the kitchenette, which she never used for cooking, offered enough room for her to fit a little computer table and her laptop. The shelves near the refrigerator, ostensibly installed for the purpose of holding dry goods or cookbooks, stored school-related files with her students'' papers in them, transforming the kitchenette into a serviceable study. As for the main area, most of its space was taken up by a full mattress. Vera''s mother had cajoled her to consider getting a futon--something she could roll up to look like a couch during the day so that she might entertain guests--but Vera had scoffed at this idea. She knew she would not be entertaining guests. She would rather have it be just herself, alone in her studio, sleeping on a comfortable mattress. When Vera had moved to Dorset from Bond Brook two years earlier, she had in her possession only that mattress, some trash bags full of clothes, and a few boxes of books she had carefully picked out from the rest she left behind. She had tried not to feel discouraged by the fact that, at her age, she was starting over again: After this, everything will be easier, she told herself. Everything else I might need will come in its own time, just as things always do. Vera unpacked her tote bag and set her library books on the floor next to her mattress and box spring. She pulled out the dining room chair that was pushed into her desk, sat down, and opened her laptop. Still in her coat and hat, she logged into her personal email account-- nothing there except for some junk mail and spam--and then into her soon-to-be-defunct faculty email at Dorset Community College. There was not much in this in-box, either: a message telling faculty to let students know of half-price tickets to see the Sea Dogs play in Portl∧ a weekly email from the IT department called "Technology Tip," which Vera never bothered to look at; a call for submissions to Writ Large, the student literary magazine. There was one email from an unknown sender, with no subject. Jensen Willard was the name in the message queue. Vera opened it and, by force of habit, read it quickly; Vera read everything quickly, as though text itself were something that might try to run away if she didn''t pin it down. To: From: Hello. My name is Jensen Willard, as you probably have deduced. I guess you''re going to be substituting for Mrs. Belisle (this is for the tenth-grade English course, Autobiographical Writing: Personal Connections). I heard you taught at DCC, so I looked you up in the faculty directory there. Mrs. Belisle said we''re going to get started on The Catcher in the Rye once you get here. I have my own personal copy that I wanted to use--the one with the original cover, not the maroon "serial killer" version that got issued to everybody in class. My version has notes in it, but I will use the other copy if that''d be easier for class discussions. Thank you in advance for any insight. I look forward to meeting you. Sincerely, Jensen Willard Vera leaned more closely toward the computer monitor--she was painfully nearsighted, even with contact lenses--and reread the message more slowly. She suppressed a smile of bemusement. This Jensen Willard--a girl, no doubt, though the name had the trendy unisex character of so many young people''s names nowadays, like Taylor or Maddox or Jordan--showed a funny mixture of earnestness and reserve in this informal writing sample. Earnestness in that she had taken the initiative to locate her new substitute teacher and ask her about class preparation; reserve in some of her diction ("Thank you in advance for any insight"). Vera thought certain phrases even hinted at wit. Most striking of all, the email was written in complete sentences, which was more than she could say for some of her college students'' emails ("Ms Lundy i cant come 2 class 2day. im sick & puking" was a not-atypical email entry from a Dorset Community College freshman). She hit the reply button and started to type a response to Jensen Willard, then thought better of it. She would be seeing her in class tomorrow. Whatever she needed to know could wait until then. Thank you in advance for any insight, Vera mouthed to herself, then thought, rather wildly: What insight? She did have what some people might call significant teaching experience: Prior to relocating to Dorset, she had taught as an adjunct at the University of Maine at Bond

Description for Sales People

A mesmerising psychological thriller, told through the eyes of two very unreliable narrators. For fans of Donna Tartt's A Secret History (Penguin, 1993). Watson is also the author of Asta in the Wings (Tin House, 2009). Smart psychological thrillers are still holding strong in the charts.

Details ISBN0142181919 Author Jan Elizabeth Watson Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc Year 2015 ISBN-10 0142181919 ISBN-13 9780142181911 Format Paperback Imprint Plume Subtitle A Novel Country of Publication United States DEWEY 813.6 Short Title WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOU Language English Media Book Place of Publication New York UK Release Date 2015-04-28 Publication Date 2015-04-28 US Release Date 2015-04-28 Audience General NZ Release Date 2015-06-23 AU Release Date 2015-06-23 Pages 352 We've got this

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