Semi-finalist, 2020 Elixir Book Prize
Short-listed, 2020 Steel Toe Book Books Prize
Finalist, 2019 Craft First Chapter Contest
Synopsis:
Dispatched by their mother to learn why his estranged twin brother Gregory (or “Brock Jones, PhD,” as he is known to fans of his bestselling self-help book) has disappeared, Stewart Detweiler drives 1,500 miles to find his twin hanging from a ceiling beam in their deceased father’s lakeside A-frame. But instead of reporting him dead, Stewart decides to become him. As he sees it, he’s not assuming his brother’s life; he’s saving it, that his worthier twin may live on, while he in turn will at last gain an audience for his novel-in-perpetual-progress (the plot of which bears an uncanny resemblance to the one described here). At first Stewart’s plan goes smoothly, but before long the motives behind his brother’s suicide emerge, clues pointing to a web of intrigue, extortion, and desperate measures taken with disastrous results.
Despite its dark trappings, DUPLICITY is a fiendishly funny novel that sheds light on the bonds of family, on success and failure, philosophy and quantum mechanics, and on the ways in which we can — and cannot — rewrite our own lives. DUPLICITY weaves all these and other themes seamlessly together, all while vivisecting its own genre.
PRAISE FOR Duplicity
“Duplicity is a hall-of-mirrors metafictional masterpiece in which everything has its equal opposite and nothing is quite what it seems. Peter Selgin has found the perfect narrator for his fratricidal-suicidal romp: the dark, mordant, too envious, too inventive, Stewart Detweiler, who lurks in the black, jealous heart of every writer whose cloistered brilliance remains unseen and rebuffed by the world. Here is Stewart’s brief moment in the sun, his chops and voice unfettered at last, and to the end — and we are dazzled.”
— Peter Nichols, bestselling author of The Rocks and A Voyage for Madmen
“Selgin’s darkly comic novel is a compelling psychological work on success and failure, American-style. It’s an astute philosophical work, taking up such universal themes as the nature of reality — is it single or dual? — and the nature of individual identity, or authentic selfhood. As a masterful literary work, Duplicity gives us a rollicking ride through the life of his protagonist’s tormented — and sometimes devious — soul, one we’re not likely to forget
— Jack Smith, author of Being, Run, and If Winter Comes
“Duplicity is an entertaining ouroboros of a book — a cleverly collated confession that takes its rightful place in a tradition of doppelgänger-haunted novels that reflect on the instability of identity and the inadequacy of language. While poking gentle fun at plot, clichés, and other elements of conventional mainstream fiction, Selgin harnesses those same workhorses to his suspenseful tale. Smart, funny, satirical and yet heartfelt, Duplicity is a book worth reading twice: once as a metafictional page-turner about twins, accidental criminality, and mid-life malaise, again as an instructive treatise on writing itself.”
— Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of Annie and the Wolves and Behave
“How to write a blurb for such a stunning novel? Duplicity is dauntingly brilliant … Twins may be at the novel’s center — equal and opposite twins colliding — but Duplicity is utterly, deliciously, singular. It should be taught in both literature and creative writing classes in perpetuity!”
— Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis
“Duplicity explores every rule of the novel, written and unwritten, through sins of omission and commission. It makes a cat’s toy of clichés and inflates conceits expressly to puncture them. It breaks the spell of its creation, only to take up the strands and weave them into a more complex enchantment. This is no accident. Peter Selgin is a master who engages the possibilities of the novel from the inside out. Duplicity is for anyone who has seen through a novel, and for anyone who has found a world in one.”
—Vincent Stanley, author of The Responsible Company
“Stewart Detweiler dreams of writing a book that ‘no matter how many times you open it, or what page you open it to, it feels like you’ve never read it before.’ In Duplicity he lives the dream. Selgin / Detweiler promises you, Dear Reader, ‘the single most unreliable narrative ever composed,’ and assures you that he is not to be trusted. He is a man of his word. Book A does indeed falsify Book B. And Book B verifies Book A. Their name is Duplicity, for they are one. Book B has been absorbed by Book A. And so will you be.”
— H. L. Hix, author of Demonstrategy
“Darkly exuberant and completely riveting, Duplicity breaks through the metaphorical fourth wall, wrestling with the boundaries of identity, the precariousness of reinvention, and the nature of fiction itself. Peter Selgin’s storytelling mastery is on full display in this provocative meditation on the writing life.”
— Amy Gottlieb, author of The Beautiful Possible
“As Stewart Detweiler drives us south through the rain in a beaten up convertible, Peter Selgin drive us deep into the craft of writing in this delightfully disorienting, tail-swallowing novel—an irresistible riddle of craft wrapped in a mystery of memoir, inside a novel of enigma. Is Duplicity a murder mystery? A book on the craft of writing? Both? Neither? Yes, precisely.”
— Charlotte Thomas, author of The Female Drama
“Wicked, intimate, and hilarious, Duplicity is a compendium of good advice about writing and plain bad intentions. Its narrator, Stewart Detweiler, who appears to be a descendent of Poe’s William Wilson and a long-lost cousin of Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, is tricky, tricky tricky. ‘Dear Reader’ (as Stewart likes to say), prepare yourself for a wild ride.”
— Jim Krusoe, author of The Sleep Garden
