Good Afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Emily Beyda, author of this, her first novel The Body Double, published last month by Doubleday. Emily has been the author of the popular advise column “Dear Glutton” for the past few years in The Austin Chronicle. Her articles are online at the paper. They are fun to read. Austin natives have a great resource in Emily’s reviews and suggestions. And as I said, The Body Double is her first novel.

The Body Double explores identity, its loss and regaining. In part the transformation of our protagonist is a dream come true, in part it is not a nightmare, but a blurred, confusing and treacherous process.

Because we have a narrator who is not necessary unreliable and a second supporting star who definitely is, we are constantly taking guesses, as the reader, thinking what is really going on. The best kind of read there is.

We are as intimately involved in Rosanna and Rosanna and Max as the author is and as the characters themselves are.

I’ll try very hard in this interview not to mention or extort spoilers, but it is going to be hard.

Trust me. This is a book that you should read, not only for your questions as you read, but the questions that remain after you put the book down, probably after you have read it in one sitting, or laying, as I did.

Welcome Emily and thanks so much for joining us today.