Among the Ten Thousand Things: A Novel

Among the Ten Thousand Things: A Novel

<b>NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For fans of Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen, Lorrie Moore, and Curtis Sittenfeld, <i>Among the Ten Thousand Things</i> is a dazzling first novel, a portrait of an American family on the cusp of irrevocable change, and a startlingly original story of love and time lost.</b><br /> <b> </b><br /> Jack Shanley is a well-known New York artist, charming and vain, who doesn’t mean to plunge his family into crisis. His wife, Deb, gladly left behind a difficult career as a dancer to raise the two children she adores. In the ensuing years, she has mostly avoided coming face-to-face with the weaknesses of the man she married. But then an anonymously sent package arrives in the mail: a cardboard box containing sheaves of printed emails chronicling Jack’s secret life. The package is addressed to Deb, but it’s delivered into the wrong hands: her children’s.<br />  <br /> With this vertiginous opening begins a debut that is by turns funny, wise, and indescribably moving. As the Shanleys spin apart into separate orbits, leaving New York in an attempt to regain their bearings, fifteen-year-old Simon feels the allure of adult freedoms for the first time, while eleven-year-old Kay wanders precariously into a grown-up world she can’t possibly understand. Writing with extraordinary precision, humor, and beauty, Julia Pierpont has crafted a timeless, hugely enjoyable novel about the bonds of family life—their brittleness, and their resilience.<br />  <br /> <b>Praise for <i>Among the Ten Thousand Things</i></b><br />  <br />“A luscious, smart summer novel . . . about a family blown apart and yet still painfully tethered together, written by a blazingly talented young author whose prose is so assured and whose observations are so precise and deeply felt that it’s almost an insult to bring up her age.”<b>—Helen Schulman, <i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br /> <b><i> </i></b><br /> “[An] excellent, insightful first novel . . . a gripping portrait of the disintegration of the Shanley family . . . Pierpont brings this family of four to life in sharply observed detail. . . . An acute observer of social comedy, Ms. Pierpont has a keen eye for the absurd.”<b>—Moira Hodgson, <i>The Wall Street Journal</i></b><br /> <b><i> </i></b><br /> “Pierpont’s language is heart-stopping. . . . Technically, of course, this is a domestic drama. But between Pierpont’s literary finesse and her captivating characters, it reads like a page-turner. [Grade:] A”<b>—<i>Entertainment Weekly</i></b><br /> <b><i> </i></b><br />“There are going to be as many ingenious twists and turns in this literary novel as there are in a top-notch work of suspense like <i>Gone Girl</i>.”<b>—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s <i>Fresh Air</i></b><br /><br />“Tender, delicately perceptive . . . Pierpont’s voice is wry and confident, and she is a fine anthropologist of New York life.”<b>—<i>The Washington Post</i></b><br /> <b><i> </i></b><br /> “Bracing . . . Pierpont’s killer ending reveals the long reach of the affair’s consequences (sorry, no plot spoilers). Consider this a twisty, gripping story—that packs an emotional wallop.”<b>—<i>O: The Oprah Magazine</i></b><br /> <b><i> </i></b><br /> “A debut so honest and mature that it will resonate with even the most action-hungry readers—perhaps against reason. Her story is the one we’ll be talking about this summer, and well beyond.”<b>—Meredith Turits, <i>Vanity Fair</i></b><br /> <b><i> </i></b><br />“Pierpont displays a precocious gift for language and observation. . . . She captures the minutiae of loneliness that pushes us away from each other and sometimes brings us back.”<b>—<i>San Francisco Chronicle</i></b><br /><br /><br /><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>