Florissant Presbyterian Church Book club

Florissant Presbyterian Church Book Club will hold its monthly online book club meeting featuring Alexandra Andrews’ “Who is Maud Dixon?” on March 23, 2022.

“Who is Maud Dixon?”

According to the official event posted on the official Facebook page of Florissant Presbyterian Church of St. Louis, the book club will be discussing Alexandra Andrews' "Who is Maud Dixon?".

It is also stated on the same Facebook event that this novel is available through the St. Louis County Library in print, audio, ebook, and e-audio formats.

According to the official website of the New York Times, “Who is Maud Dixon?” is a buzzy debut novel that's already on its way to Hollywood, and is about a lot of things. It is about being young, uncomfortable, outraged, and resentful.

It is also stated on the same website that it is about ambition, reinvention, writer's block, the vagaries of literary repute, the murkiness of fictional inspiration, and the desire to grasp life by the collar and shake it until the money begins pouring out.

Referring to the same article, it is mentioned that Florence– the protagonist in the book, is 26 when the book begins, and she works as an assistant at the fictional Forrester Books, a publishing business in New York.

Also mentioned in the same article is that she graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville and feels like a dowdy nothingburger amid well-connected Ivy League grads, with their stylish attire, supercilious attitudes, and proclivity to allude to "Pina Bausch" and "Koyaanisqatsi."

It is also stated in the same article that all of a sudden, a fantastic new job opportunity arrives, to work as the assistant to Helen Wilcox, pen name Maud Dixon, author of the runaway best-seller "Mississippi Foxtrot," a coming-of-age novel about two teenage girls and a murder.

In the same article, it was stated that Helen and Florence both relocated to Morocco, and from there, "Maud Dixon" becomes a plot-heavy adventure rather than a Highsmith-Esque character study, the neatly painted image of a wonderfully attractive psychopath. There are ruses, forgeries, wit wars, and story twists that arise out of nowhere.

Also revealed in the same article that at some point, the readers will realize that viewing things through Florence's eyes has deprived people of the opportunity to ponder that she is not the only one with a tangled goal.

Alexandra Andrews

According to her official website, Alexandra Andrews has worked in New York and Paris as a journalist, editor, and copywriter. “Who Is Maud Dixon?” was her debut novel.

On the official website of Entertainment Weekly, it is mentioned that when Alexandra was writing “Who Is Maud Dixon?”, she was thinking about two of her favorite female authors. Patricia Highsmith, who was rereading The Talented Mr. Ripley at the time, was the first, and her influence can be seen in Andrews' sleek, twisting thriller.

As mentioned in the same article, the second was a little more meta than the first. Andrews mentioned in that interview that it was also about the period when Elena Ferrante's fever was at an all-time high. Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous novelist and she was intrigued by everyone's interest in her true identity.

Referring to the same article by Mary Sollosi in Entertainment Weekly, Andrews is a former journalist and "frustrated writer," who used Florence to work through some of her personal issues. Her observations on what it means to have ambition, seek inspiration, and be a writer flow throughout the book. Andrews describes her story as being about identity, namely how individuals transform who they are to become who they want to be.