Traveling With An Eggplant

Book Jacket Excerpt: What exactly happened? Where do dreams end and a parallel universe begin?         

Alycia Ripley’s debut novel is a unique and deceptive re-imagining of Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz: a surreal world of music, magic, ghosts, and the state of modern romance.               

Music journalist Alison Olson finds herself wandering the college campus she attended years earlier. As her memories resurface and she remembers a cryptic comment from her favorite singer, Elvis Costello, she begins a story of three hardships: her rise through the ranks of a music magazine, a strange friendship with Seymour, an emotionally unavailable neuroscientist, and the fact that she suffers from audiokinesis- a condition that allows songs and voices to broadcast inside her head. The complicated relationship between Alison and Seymour examines the malleability of personality and forces Alison to confront a childhood monster in order to avoid a horrible tragedy.    

The novel explores a world where anything is possible and the implausible is the norm. Infused with a 1980’s pop soundtrack, it is mediation on wish fulfillment, destiny, and heroism while proving the age-old adage that you sometimes have to lose yourself before you can find anything.

From the book: I wrenched him under the surface and the same pressure that had swept me up shoved us toward the bottom. He wrapped his hands around my neck, squeezing as we flailed in the current. Heat ran through my body. We were trailing something.  Seaweed. Long, thick strands of it. As we darted through the increasing current it unraveled behind us. Mirrors surrounded me again. As he pounded on my temples I watched myself in my interview for the magazine and walking along a street with Seymour. There was my house in Canada, my mother, Tara, the afternoon in Nebraska when the voices pounded through my head. An image of Elvis Costello and I. Then a rabbit. Just a rabbit wearing man’s clothes, The last name ‘Olson’ is the surname of Alycia’s grandmother. looking at his watch. Clock’s ticking, little mouse. Then he smiled. Finish this one already.