The Great Bravura

“Jill Dearman is the New Queen of Noir.” —Go Magazine “Brutal and magical and sexy as hell. Dearman’s noir voice shatters boundaries I never knew existed.” —Augusten Burroughs, author, Running With Scissors. “A rich, noirish picture of Olde New York with a punk sensibility that rocks the senses. Dearman’s characters are twisted, doomed, with a lust for life.” —Roberta Bayley, photographer and author of Patti Smith and Blank Generation Revisited: The Early Days of Punk Rock. “Sapphically ardent, meta-absurd, and Nin-sexy all at once, Jill Dearman’s tale is a triumph of mysterious pleasures: a Colette martini with a drop of Robbe-Grillet vermouth and a Jeanette Winterson olive.” —Michael Atkinson, author of Exile Cinema and Hemingway Deadlights. “The Great Bravura straddles two worlds: her feet are firmly planted on earth, among a gritty ragtag group of early-20th century circus performers, while her hands reach for the stars, drawing the reader into a magical mystery realm where fantasy and sorcery are commonplace. Dearman builds on the tension created by the two milieus bumping into each other on the page to ultimately create a morality tale reminiscent of another era―the tragedies of ancient Greece.” —Aaron Krach, artist, journalist, and author of Half-Life "With the illusion of a good magic show and the captivating edge of the early 20th century, The Great Bravura spellbinds readers in its twisted tale.” —RT Reviews