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Author: Joanna Smith Rakoff
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781416596332
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
Like The Group, Mary McCarthy's classic tale about coming of age in New York, Joanna Smith Rakoff 's richly drawn and immensely satisfying first novel details the lives of a group of Oberlin graduates whose ambitions and friendships threaten to unravel as they chase their dreams, shed their youth, and build their lives in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the turn of the twenty-first century. There's Lil, a would-be scholar whose marriage to an egotistical writer initially brings the group back together (and ultimately drives it apart); Beth, who struggles to let go of her old beau Dave, a onetime piano prodigy trapped by his own insecurity; Emily, an actor perpetually on the verge of success -- and starvation -- who grapples with her jealousy of Tal, whose acting career has taken off. At the center of their orbit is wry, charismatic Sadie Peregrine, who coolly observes her friends' mistakes but can't quite manage to avoid making her own. As they begin their careers, marry, and have children, they must navigate the shifting dynamics of their friendships and of the world around them. Set against the backdrop of the vast economic and political changes of the era -- from the decadent age of dot-com millionaires to the sobering post-September 2001 landscape -- Smith Rakoff's deeply affecting characters and incisive social commentary are reminiscent of the great Victorian novels. This brilliant and ambitious debut captures a generation and heralds the arrival of a bold and important new writer.
Author: Joanna Smith Rakoff
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781416596332
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Get Book
Book Description
Like The Group, Mary McCarthy's classic tale about coming of age in New York, Joanna Smith Rakoff 's richly drawn and immensely satisfying first novel details the lives of a group of Oberlin graduates whose ambitions and friendships threaten to unravel as they chase their dreams, shed their youth, and build their lives in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the turn of the twenty-first century. There's Lil, a would-be scholar whose marriage to an egotistical writer initially brings the group back together (and ultimately drives it apart); Beth, who struggles to let go of her old beau Dave, a onetime piano prodigy trapped by his own insecurity; Emily, an actor perpetually on the verge of success -- and starvation -- who grapples with her jealousy of Tal, whose acting career has taken off. At the center of their orbit is wry, charismatic Sadie Peregrine, who coolly observes her friends' mistakes but can't quite manage to avoid making her own. As they begin their careers, marry, and have children, they must navigate the shifting dynamics of their friendships and of the world around them. Set against the backdrop of the vast economic and political changes of the era -- from the decadent age of dot-com millionaires to the sobering post-September 2001 landscape -- Smith Rakoff's deeply affecting characters and incisive social commentary are reminiscent of the great Victorian novels. This brilliant and ambitious debut captures a generation and heralds the arrival of a bold and important new writer.
Author: Joanna Rakoff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781408862391
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Living in crumbling Brooklyn apartments, holding down jobs as actors and writers and eschewing the middle-class sensibilities of their parents, graduates of the prestigious Oberlin College, Lil, Beth, Sadie, Emily, Dave and Tal believe they can have it all. When the group come together to celebrate a marriage,anything seems possible. But soon the reality of rent, marriage and family will test them all. For this fortunate age can't last for ever, and the group must face adulthood, whether they are ready for it or not. Sprawling and richly drawn, A Fortunate Age traces the lives of the group during some of the most defining years of modern America - from the decadence of the dot com boom through to the sobering events of September 11 and the trailing years that followed - this brilliant, ambitious debut novel perfectly captures the hopes, anxieties and dreams of a generation.
Author: A.B. Facey
Publisher: Fremantle Press
ISBN: 1925591417
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Albert Facey’s story is the story of Australia.Born in 1894, and first sent to work at the age of eight, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a labourer and farmer and jackaroo, becoming lost and then rescued by Indigenous trackers, then gaining a hard-won literacy, surviving Gallipoli, raising a family through the Depression, losing a son in the Second World War, and meeting his beloved Evelyn with whom he shared nearly sixty years of marriage.Despite enduring unimaginable hardships, Facey always saw his life as a fortunate one.A true classic of Australian literature, Facey’s simply penned story offers a unique window onto the history of Australian life through the greater part of the twentieth century – the extraordinary journey of an ordinary man.
Author: Henrik Pontoppidan
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 8763544245
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 775
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Book Description
At the height of his powers, Per Sidenius, the son of a poor religious minister, is a fortunate man. He has the whole of the approaching twentieth century in his grasp: a fabulously rich Jewish heiress as a soon-to-be wife, burgeoning fame as a forward- and free-thinking man of the ‘New Age’ and success in having put his sorry childhood behind him. But just as he reaches the lofty heights of bourgeois success, Per begins to deeply question his life. A series of events then unfold which Nobel Prize–winning author Henrik Pontoppidan describes with unflinching honesty and intensely human passion. Here is the hectic foment of social and religious debate, the unrepentant greed of finance sharks, the hot coals of pure and illicit love. Then the biggest questions of all – who am I and what have I to do? With A Fortunate Man (1898–1904) one of Denmark’s greatest ever writers manages not only to sound the depths of his nation’s soul but also to paint a huge European canvas stretching from vintage Copenhagen to the sultry heat of Rome at the turn of the nineteenth century. Heralded by such influential figures as Thomas Mann and Georg Lukács as a seminal work, this is a truly breathtaking novel which places Henrik Pontoppidan as one of the true greats of modern European literature.
Author: Ed Tarkington
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616206802
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
“The Fortunate Ones feels like a fresh and remarkably sure-footed take on The Great Gatsby, examining the complex costs of attempting to transcend or exchange your given class for a more gilded one. Tarkington’s understanding of the human heart and mind is deep, wise, and uncommonly empathetic. As a novelist, he is the real deal. I can’t wait to see this story reach a wide audience, and to see what he does next.” —Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife When Charlie Boykin was young, he thought his life with his single mother on the working-class side of Nashville was perfectly fine. But when his mother arranges for him to be admitted as a scholarship student to an elite private school, he is suddenly introduced to what the world can feel like to someone cushioned by money. That world, he discovers, is an almost irresistible place where one can bend—and break—rules and still end up untarnished. As he gets drawn into a friendship with a charismatic upperclassman, Archer Creigh, and an affluent family that treats him like an adopted son, Charlie quickly adapts to life in the upper echelons of Nashville society. Under their charming and alcohol-soaked spell, how can he not relax and enjoy it all—the lack of anxiety over money, the easy summers spent poolside at perfectly appointed mansions, the lavish parties, the freedom to make mistakes knowing that everything can be glossed over or fixed? But over time, Charlie is increasingly pulled into covering for Archer’s constant deceits and his casual bigotry. At what point will the attraction of wealth and prestige wear off enough for Charlie to take a stand—and will he? The Fortunate Ones is an immersive, elegantly written story that conveys both the seductiveness of this world and the corruption of the people who see their ascent to the top as their birthright.
Author: Joanna Rakoff
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307958019
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
A keenly observed and irresistibly funny memoir about literary New York in the late nineties, a pre-digital world on the cusp of vanishing. Now a major motion picture starring Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley After leaving graduate school to pursue her dream of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff takes a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger. Precariously balanced between poverty and glamour, she spends her days in a plush, wood-paneled office—where Dictaphones and typewriters still reign and agents doze after three-martini lunches—and then goes home to her threadbare Brooklyn apartment and her socialist boyfriend. Rakoff is tasked with processing Salinger’s voluminous fan mail, but as she reads the heart-wrenching letters from around the world, she becomes reluctant to send the agency’s form response and impulsively begins writing back. The results are both humorous and moving, as Rakoff, while acting as the great writer’s voice, begins to discover her own.
Author: Walter Mosley
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 9780759515482
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Tommy's nickname is Lucky, but no one would think this crippled boy was blessed. Cursed with health problems and drawn into trouble more often than not, Tommy is the recipient of pity rather than admiration. He is nothing like his stepbrother Eric. Eric, a Nordic Adonis, is graced by a seemingly endless supply of good fortune-he is charming, a star athlete, and a magnet for anyone in his sphere. Yet in spite of these differences, Eric and Tommy are as close as two humans can be. After tragedy rips their makeshift family apart, the lives of these boys split. In a powerful story of modern-day resilience and redemption, Tommy and Eric forge their separate ways in the world, each confronting the challenges of his sphere. For Tommy this means dropping out of school, selling drugs, living on the streets, and somehow creating a family of his own. Motherless, African-American, and impoverished, Tommy has nothing but feels lucky every day of his life. For Eric, the golden youth, life means athletics, sexual attraction, excellent grades, prosperity, and the uncertainty that comes with prizes won too easily. Given everything, he trusts nothing. Eric and Tommy's parallel lives are an astonishing story of self-determination and the true measure of fortune. The ties that bind this Adonis and his sickly counterpart, however, are thicker than blood, and when circumstances reunite Eric and Tommy after years apart, their distinct approaches to life may be the only thing that can save them from forces that threaten to destroy them for good. Written with unique insight into the hidden currents and deeper realities of modern life, Fortunate Son is a tour de force by the author the Boston Globe calls "one of this nation's finest writers."
Author: Joanna Rakoff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781526600325
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Author: Sean B. Carroll
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691201757
Category : PHILOSOPHY
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
"Fascinating and exhilarating—Sean B. Carroll at his very best."—Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants From acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world. Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things—any of which might never have occurred—had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death. This is a relatively small book about a really big idea. It is also a spirited tale. Drawing inspiration from Monty Python, Kurt Vonnegut, and other great thinkers, and crafted by one of today's most accomplished science storytellers, A Series of Fortunate Events is an irresistibly entertaining and thought-provoking account of one of the most important but least appreciated facts of life.
Author: Julia May Jonas
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982187654
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
An NPR, Washington Post, Time, People, Vulture, Guardian, Vox, Kirkus Reviews, Newsweek, LitHub, and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year * “Delightful…cathartic, devious, and terrifically entertaining.” —The New York Times * “Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny.” —People (Book of the Week) A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own... “When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding. With this bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured debut, author Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. Propulsive, darkly funny, and wildly entertaining, Vladimir perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.
