The Astral

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FROM THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GREAT MAN, A SCINTILLATING NOVEL-SET IN THE HEART OF BROOKLYN-ABOUT LOVE, LOSS, AND MAKING A NEW LIFE ON THE WRECKAGE OF THE OLD
The Astral is a huge, rose-colored apartment building in the rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of Green-point. For decades, it has been the happy home (or so he thought) of the poet Hariy Quirk and his wife, Luz, who raised two children in their rambling top-floor apartment. However, the aging Astral's gloiy is beginning to fade—and as the building crumbles around him, a series of events forces Hariy to face the reality of his own fractured family.
He has little in common with his daughter, Karina, who is now openly gay and pursuing a radical freegan lifestyle in another part of Brooklyn. His son, Hector, once a promising student, has forsaken his future and his family to join the Children of Hashem, a pseudo-religious cult in Sag Harbor. Harry's formally strict poems—they have a regular meter... Tovább

Fülszöveg

FROM THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GREAT MAN, A SCINTILLATING NOVEL-SET IN THE HEART OF BROOKLYN-ABOUT LOVE, LOSS, AND MAKING A NEW LIFE ON THE WRECKAGE OF THE OLD
The Astral is a huge, rose-colored apartment building in the rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of Green-point. For decades, it has been the happy home (or so he thought) of the poet Hariy Quirk and his wife, Luz, who raised two children in their rambling top-floor apartment. However, the aging Astral's gloiy is beginning to fade—and as the building crumbles around him, a series of events forces Hariy to face the reality of his own fractured family.
He has little in common with his daughter, Karina, who is now openly gay and pursuing a radical freegan lifestyle in another part of Brooklyn. His son, Hector, once a promising student, has forsaken his future and his family to join the Children of Hashem, a pseudo-religious cult in Sag Harbor. Harry's formally strict poems—they have a regular meter and rhyme schemes—are increasingly out of literary fashion. And when Luz finds some poems that ignite her long-simmering suspicions of infidelity, Hariy finds himself summarily kicked out of the Astral.
Estranged from his wife, unable to understand his children's choices, and forced to work as a bookkeeper in a Hasidic lumberyard to keep a roof over his head, Harry is a broken man. Confronted with the undeniable consequences of his literary, marital, financial, and parental
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failures, he can save himself only by starting over. But sometimes the wounds of the past prove too deep to heal, and Harry must discover the hard way that part of moving forward means learning to let go.
Lively, sad, funny, soulful, and unpredictable, The Astral is an unapologetically authentic portrait of a floundering family—and a man desperate for a second chance. Touched by Kate Christensen's inimitable novelistic grace and acute perception, it is by turns achingly bittersweet and terrifically moving.
KATE CHRISTENSEN is the author of five
previous novels, including In the Drink, Jeremy Thrane, The Epicure's Lament, and Trouble. The Great Man won the ?oo8 PEN/Faulkner Award. She has written reviews and essays for numerous publications, most recently the New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Tin House, a.nd Elle.
Kate Christensen's previous novels are available in Anchor paperback.
PRAISE FOR KATE CHRISTENSEN
"Christensen is the kind of writer who's willing to say things most people don't dare to. And she knows exactly how to say them." — Time
"[Her] characters are marvelously realized, and when Christensen's on a roll, her wit is irresistible." —Publishers Weekly
"Christensen's writing is clear-eyed, bitingly funny, and supremely caustic about the niceties of social relations, contemporary American culture, and sexual politics." —0, The Oprah Magazine
"Nimble, witty, and discerning, Kate Christensen is single-handedly reinvigorating the comedy of manners with her smart and disemboweling novels of misanthropes, cultural and aesthetic divides, private angst, social ambition, and appetites run amok." — Chicago Tribune
"Kate Christensen is a serious writer; Don't be fooled by the relentless hipness or what seems full-throttle frivolity of her subject matter—the joke, if you don't get it, is on you." — New York Observer
"Kate Christensen's brilliant, bighearted skewering of greatness, of men reminded me that books can be witty, and heartbreaking, and intelligent, and keep you up too late reading. How rare it is that a writer is talented enough to deliver such varied treasures in one novel, but Christensen manages it effortlessly." -HEIDI JULAVITS, author of The Uses of Enchantment
ISBN 978-0-585-53091-0
978038553091052595 Vissza