A heartwarming and blisteringly funny tale of family, friendship and fire, now available in a smaller and competitively priced format.
The New York Times bestselling novel.
Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. Then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal and they've barely spoken since. Until now, when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help.
Madison's twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their carer. However, there's a catch- the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it's the truth.
Thinking of her dead-end life at home, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other-and stay cool-while also staying out of the way of Madison's buttoned-up politician husband.
Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her. Couldn't this be the start of the amazing life she'd always hoped for?
About the Author
Kevin Wilson is the author of the collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, which received the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere, and has appeared in four volumes of the New Stories from the South: The Year's Best Anthology.
He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the KHN Center for the Arts. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his son, Griff, where he teaches fiction at the University of the South and helps run the Sewanee Writers' Conference.
Industry Reviews
'Good Lord, I can't believe how good this book is...It's wholly original. It's also perfect...Wilson writes with such a light touch that it seems fairly impossible for the book to have a big emotional payoff. But there is, and that's the brilliance of the novel-that it distracts you with these weirdo characters and mesmerizing and funny sentences and then hits you in a way you didn't see coming. You're laughing so hard you don't even realize that you've suddenly caught fire.'
* New York Times *
'There's hardly a sentence in Kevin Wilson's Nothing to See Here that feels like anything you've read before, that's how fresh his voice is, and how willfully, wonderfully bizarre the book's plot...That the supernatural elements of Nothing feel so right is a testament to Wilson's innate skill as a storyteller.'
* Entertainment Weekly *
'Wilson captures the wrenching emotions of caring for children in this exceptional, and exceptionally hilarious, novel.'
* Publishers Weekly *
'It's a satisfying ending, steeped in a very human mix of ambivalence and optimism. Wilson's ability to capture such tangled sentiments makes him a thoroughly engaging and appealing writer.'
* Boston Globe *
'[A] deadpan, hilarious modern fairy tale complete with impoverished heroine, cruel princess and neglected children with magical powers...You'll close the covers with a smile.'
* Newsday *
'In this funny and affecting novel, Wilson has introduced one outlandish element that exposes more truth than strict realism could.'
* Star Tribune *
