The Fine Art of Fucking Up

"Funny and charmingly ridiculous." --Kirkus Reviews "Cate Dicharry's comic timing is unimpeachable and though her characters are idiosyncratic and quirky, they are deeply dimensional and exceptionally real. A richly complicated and rewarding novel." -- Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of Hausfrau "The title of this book will not lead you astray: fucking up happens here, in spectacular, delightfully, absurdly over-the-top fashion. Cate Dicharry's debut is a smart and tremendously fun read, and I rooted for Dicharry's Nina Lanning and her colleagues to pull off their crazy escapade all the way." --Elizabeth Crane, author of We Only Know So Much "In The Fine Art of Fucking Up, Cate Dicharry ups the ante on the campus novel, delivering a hilarious and often bloody tale of administrative derring-do. This is a sharp, big-hearted debut by a writer with talent to burn." --Jim Gavin, author of Middle Men "Cate Dicharry has an unwaveringly merciless eye for the bogus aspects of art school. But you don't need a BA in Painting or Performance Studies to enjoy the screwball comedy of The Fine Art of Fucking Up. An affectionate yet unsparing view of how easy it is to lose one's way." -- Sara Levine, author of Treasure Island!!! "Dicharry's novel is a dark and funny mix of slapstick, observational humor and institutional satire. Ultimately, this is a caper, and Dicharry's ability to write humor into tragedy, into her main character's unspooling, makes for an entertaining read." --Electric Literature "To be sure, comedy is very, very hard to write. Every time Dicharry made me laugh, which was often, I felt like she deserved a trophy. She gathered a nice little shelf of them." --Bookforum "Cate Dicharry's excellent debut novel, The Fine Art of Fucking Up, weaves humor and humanity to explore one woman's personal and professional dissatisfaction and to suggest how we all might be able to cleave past our setbacks to find our own joy." --The Rumpus "How thoroughly The Fine Art of Fucking Up sucked me in, and how, like good books tend to do, this novel operated by some kind of clairvoyant book magic: This is exactly the book you need to read right now; this is your life, but enough not your life to see it clearly. Good job. Keep reading." -- Kailyn McCord in Quaint Magazine