The Biology of Luck
By Jacob M. Appel
It’s Wednesday, June 16, 2004—the 100th Bloomsday—in New York City. Odd-job queen Starshine Hart is about to go on somebody else’s perfect date. At 29, the usually carefree Starshine has realized that it is easier to start sleeping with a man than to stop. Her lovers include one of the last underground members of the Weathermen and the heir to a lawn chair magnate, both of whom have staked their romantic future on her. Her only respite is an impending dinner with her homely, nonthreatening friend Larry Bloom, a New York City tour guide. But Larry, too, has a stake in her future. He has secretly written a book about Starshine in which he fantasizes about her life on the day he wins her heart. Interleaving Larry’s guided tour of New York City that day with chapters of the novel in which he imagines Starshine’s concurrent escapades, The Biology of Luck weaves a richly imaginative love story across all five boroughs.
This is a new edition of Appel’s celebrated novel, first published in 2013 by Elephant Rock Books.
Notices
“In Appel’s clever, vigorously written, intently observed, and richly emotional tale, hilarious mishaps are wildly complicated by the intersections between life and Larry’s novel about Starshine. From bagel-throwing demonstrators attacking a group of puzzled Dutch tourists to Starshine’s bicycle odyssey in quest of a fruit basket for her Alzheimer’s-afflicted aunt to the mysterious powers of a one-armed building superintendent, Appel’s funky urban fairy tale is spiked with canny observations about human nature. Do we inherit or create luck? Is beauty a burden or a gift? Can love transcend fantasy? Seductive and thought-provoking.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist
“An inventive exploration of the place where love, chance, expectations and ambitions intersect in the city that never sleeps.”
“The Biology of Luck is a burghers’ banquet of the best of New York and an unapologetic romantic’s hopes for the dreams of the last and most forgotten among us.”
—Michael Dahlie, author of A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living
Jacob M. Appel is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Education at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, where he is Director of Ethics Education in Psychiatry, Associate Director of the Academy for Medicine and the Humanities, and Medical Director of the Mental Health Clinic at the East Harlem Health Outreach Program. Jacob is the author of five literary novels, ten short story collections, two volumes of poems, an essay collection, a cozy mystery, a thriller, and a compendium of dilemmas in medical ethics. He is Vice President and Treasurer of the National Book Critics Circle, co-chair of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry’s Committee on Psychiatry & Law, and a Councilor of the New York County Psychiatric Society and of the American Academy of Psychiatry & Law. More at: www.jacobmappel.com.