The Vixen
At his first job as a slush-pile editor, Simon, a young Jewish man grapples with fallout from the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Should he help bring to market a book that portrays Ethel as a seductive, greedy, and fully complicit traitor? As Simon's anxiety grows, the truth becomes ever harder to pin down.
Prose forces us to confront our own desires for approval, money, and influence, and see our complicity in the lies perpetuated by those who will benefit from them most.
Lovers at the Chameleon Club
The author traces the life of a young woman named Lou before and during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Her parents find her baffling; repulsed by her lack of feminine impulses, they send her away. She begins to dress in men's clothing, and finds herself at the Chameleon Club, a haven for cross-dressers, homosexuals, and other social pariahs. She finally achieves some notoriety as an athlete and race-car driver, and some degree of affection from a series of lovers. But she ends up famous for something else: her prowess at torturing French resistors.
Prose examines Lou's life in an an attempt to answer the ultimate question: what causes one human being to dehumanize and torture her own people?
A Changed Man
A skinhead named Nolan shows up at a nonprofit developed by a Jewish holocaust survivor; Nolan insists he's changed and wants to keep others from making the same mistakes he did. Lickety split, he's become the new poster boy for the financially strapped organization. The question is, is he telling the truth? And even if he isn't, who exactly is using whom?
Pretty soon the boundaries between skinheads and middle-class do-gooders begin to break down. Are we really so different? Are any of us truly free from prejudice and self-seeking? Prose pokes fun at skinheads who spout violence but never leave their own living rooms, and our PC selves, so intent on doing good that we can't see the less-than-noble attitudes brewing in our own households.
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