KAROLINA WACLAWIAK discusses her new novel THE INVADERS, together with ANTONIA CRANE

The Invaders (Regan Arts)

 Please welcome back to Skylight one of our favorite local authors, Karolina Waclawiak! 

 A searing follow-up to Karolina Waclawiak’s critically acclaimed debut novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, The Invaders casts a harsh light on the glossy sheen of even the most “perfect” lives in America’s exclusive beach communities. The novel centers around Cheryl who has never been the right kind of country-club wife and has always felt like an outsider. Now in her mid-forties—facing the harsh realities of aging and a disintegrating marriage—she feels cast adrift by the sparkling seaside community of Little Neck Cove, Connecticut. When her troubled stepson Teddy moves back home after being kicked out of college, she joins him in an epic downward spiral, just as a storm brewing off the coast threatens to destroy the precarious safe haven crashing down around them. With sharp wit and dark humor, The Invaders exposes the lies and insecurities that run like fault lines through our culture, threatening to pitch bored housewives, pill-popping children, and suspicious neighbors headlong into the suburban abyss.

Praise for The Invaders

“The Invaders, by the glorious Karolina Waclawiak, is an elegant, ominous book. It’s a sharp, witty novel of manners of the most sinister kind. In Waclawiak’s expert hands, this novel will have you holding your breath and your heart until the very last word.” —Roxanne Gay, Bad Feminist and An Untamed State

“Karolina Waclawiak’s The Invaders is the stiffest of literary drinks—it’ll jolt your system, and make the world around you glow a little differently when you’re done with it. Witty, dark, and honest, this novel tells the hard—but hilarious—truths about aging in America, dysfunctional relationships, and suburban vices.” —Jami Attenberg, The Middlesteins

“The Invaders is as crisp as they come, hilarious and alarming in equal measure. This book is a time bomb in madras shorts, ready for golf, sex, and natural disasters.” —Emma Straub, The Vacationers and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures

“Karolina Waclawiak’s The Invaders is a blazing wonder of a novel. So long limited to satire and parody, the pristine world of the American suburbs become, in Waclawiak’s skillful hands, places of tumult, hunger, loneliness and menace. Her heroes are outsiders-on-the-inside and we watch them struggle amid the confinements of their environment and their own complicated histories. As whip-smart and cunning as it is poignant and mysterious The Invaders demonstrates that Waclawiak’s masterful debut novel, How to Get into the Twin Palms, was just the beginning.” —Megan Abbott, author ofDare Me

“The Invaders is a gut punch of a novel—a scathing look at privileged people trapped by their own choices, but unable to imagine an alternative to their misery. Karolina Waclawiak is a remarkable writer, able to channel the unflinching clarity of Richard Yates, the off-kilter tenderness of Cheever, and taut narrative energy of crime fiction in a voice that is all her own.” —Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers and Little Children

“Seamlessly blending literary and genre traditions, Karolina Waclawiak never fails to surprise, delight, and reveal secrets that lesser writers keep hidden. I love her work, and I'm already waiting for the next book.” —Sara Gran, author of Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

“Karolina Waclawiak’s The Invaders is a thrilling meditation on the explosive complexities of marriage, identity, and class—all set against the picturesque yet stultifying landscape of small-town Connecticut. Waclawiak is a master at illuminating the secret selves these characters long to keep hidden, and The Invaders is a wonderfully fierce novel, from a brilliant and essential talent.” —Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth and Find Me

“A witty, vicious, and entirely moving portrait of privilege, alienation, and sexual invisibility set in a Connecticut beach community.” —Kate Zambreno, author of Green Girl

“How To Get Into The Twin Palms was a mini-masterpiece of atmosphere and mood; a new book is a cause for celebration.” —Emily Gould, author of Friendship

Karolina Waclawiak received her BFA in Screenwriting from USC School of Cinematic Arts and her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her first novel, How To Get Into The Twin Palms, was published by Two Dollar Radio in 2012. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, and The Believer (where she is also an editor). She lives in Los Angeles.

Antonia Crane is a writer, teacher and Moth Story Slam Winner in Los Angeles. She is the author of the memoir Spent(Barnacle Books/Rare Bird Lit March, 2014). She was featured on Lisa Ling’s documentary, “This is Life” recently on CNN. Her other work can be found in Playboy, Cosmopolitan Magazine, The Rumpus, Dame Magazine, Salon, PANK magazine, Black Clock, The Weeklings, The Believer, Frequencies, Slake, The Los Angeles Review, The New Black, The Heroin Chronicles and lots of other places. She the CNF editor at Word Riot. She is at work on another memoir about running wild in Bombay, India as a teenager.