Erika Carter's work has appeared in the Colorado Review, Meridian, CutBank, and the South Carolina Review, among other literary journals and magazines. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband, the artist Rob Carter.
Praise for Lucky You
An NPR Best Book of 2017
An official Book of the Month Club selection.
1 of 6 New Paperbacks You Should Read in August
(Vulture)
"[A] cooly enigmatic debut."-O Magazine
"If your fever dreams of going off-grid remains unfulfilled,
sublimate with Erika Carter's chillingly adroit debut novel,
Lucky You, about three twentysomethings who, bored with life
in a college town, move to the no-paced Ozarks-where life lessons
in sexual tensions, isolation, and personal foibles shift into
fast-forward."-Elle
"Beautifully, sharply, humorously deployed prose." -Southern
Living, one of the Best Books of the Year
"...[A] rich and observant debut."-Marie Claire
"Carter has written a wonderful novel, intelligent but
unpretentious. As an author, she's both unsparing and
compassionate, and among her greatest gifts is an ability to find a
savage kind of beauty in the unlikeliest of places . . . Lucky
You is, in the end, challenging, intelligent and, yes, quite
beautiful." -Michael Schaub, NPR online
"[A] perceptive debut novel . . . The women's journey of
self-discovery, or lack thereof, make them perfect 21st-century
heroines." -Vulture, 1 of 6 New Paperbacks You Should Read
in August
"A darkly funny and melancholic look at the inevitable uncertainty
of early adulthood." -PureWow
"As a novel about detached youth, Lucky You absolutely fits
the bill . . . Certain moments of linguistic detail shine like the
disco ball depicted on the book's cover . . . It's rare to see the
plight of millennials cast outside of urban centers, out in the
country, with frat couches on lawns and Old Crow Kentucky bourbon
as well whiskey. Lucky You accurately and empathetically
depicts the struggles of certain Southerners, and for that alone,
it's worth a read." -BOMB
"Carter's ambitious debut novel delves into the ennui that comes
with being young and unsure... Carter's no-nonsense prose is darkly
witty, lacking the self-indulgence or mean-spiritedness often seen
in stories about modern youth... Carter's compassion for her lost
young women is clear, and the story never falters from the starkly
realistic trajectories marked out for the protagonists. The result
is a clever and honest look at the consequences of youthful
malaise." -Publishers Weekly
"Throughout the novel, Carter's language is surprising, even
tactile... A melancholy, elliptical tale of friendship and
alienation in the South." -Kirkus Reviews
"Carter's sharp debut novel reads like a long-remembered nightmare,
eerily realistic and subtly horrifying . . . Off-grid-living
stories have become quite popular as of late . . . and Lucky You is
a nice addition to the canon . . . Readers will be hard-pressed to
put the book down as the girls make their breaks back to
civilization." -Booklist
"With lean and impressionistic prose, Erika Carter casts a most
compelling light on three young women trying to bloom into their
very selves. But this blooming is never easy, and Carter renders it
gorgeously with street-wise compassion, grit, and a kind of dark,
life-loving humor that is absolutely irresistible to read. Lucky
You is not only a superb novel, it heralds a strong and
authentic new voice among us. From here on out, I will read
whatever Erika Carter writes!" -Andre Dubus III, New York
Times bestselling author of Townie
"Lucky You is a wry and unflinching portrait of three young
women navigating dark and complicated issues of love and sex and
loneliness, depicted with a sharply observant eye, precision prose,
wicked humor and courageous insights into the hearts of these
characters. This is a powerful and touching book written with the
wisdom and control of a seasoned novelist, and Erika Carter has
announced herself with a bold, honest, and emotionally scorching
debut." -Nic Pizzolatto, author of Galveston, creator and
writer of True Detective
"Erika Carter has that rare combination of tough
intelligence-almost, as it were, the rough straightforward
shrewdness of old-style city-beat newspaper writers-and the
musical, sensual, subtle touch of the poet. Her story of these
three young women will keep you reading, and you won't soon forget
them. What a marvelously talented young writer." -Richard Bausch,
author of Before, During, After
"The most beautiful novels read like fevered whispers, a shared
secret, and Carter's prose lingers like that. For a book that
features haikus, the novel has some of that style, desperately
distilling life down to our dreams and desires." -Joshua Mohr
"With Lucky You, Erika Carter has written a magnificent
novel that pitches and swirls forward as love stories pivot toward
heartbreak, power poisons sex, drunkenness turns to sobriety and
back to drunkenness again, and misguided people search for things
that aren't to be found, from dark basement bars to the rolling
wooded landscape of the Arkansas Ozarks. Lucky You is an
utterly captivating novel, written in precise, surprising sentences
with a charge so electric they snap across the page like
lightning."-Benjamin Hale, author of The Evolution of Bruno
Littlemore and The Fat Artist
"By turns dark and funny, Lucky You is a stunningly honest
novel about the inner lives of three women. Sexy, risky, with a
pleasurably dangerous tension. Erika Carter's writing is
effortlessly remarkable." - Janis Cooke Newman, author of A
Master Plan for Rescue
"The 'you' in this novel's title might refer to the reader, who's
lucky to have discovered this book. Sexy, wise, wryly funny, it
covers two years in the lives of three young women searching
for-what?-love, health, happiness, or any combination of the three.
It's brilliantly observed and masterfully paced, and its voice will
resonate long after the last page. You lucky, lucky reader."-Tom
Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
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