Little Disasters
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
A gripping novel about two young married couples--expectant parents and new friends--whose lives collide in a pile-up of deceits and indiscretions
It was the exhilaration of new parenthood that first united Michael and Paul, outside the Brooklyn hospital where their wives, Rebecca and Jenny, had exiled them from the delivery room. For Paul, though, tragedy swiftly followed that euphoria. Hoping to speed his and Jenny's recovery, he turns to Michael for a favor, unwittingly kindling the spark of connection between these couples into the affair that will blow them apart.
One year later, on the same morning that the catastrophes of their personal lives come to an explosive head, a mysterious crisis in Midtown Manhattan all but shuts down the city, leaving both men stranded--Michael at the northernmost tip of the island and Paul in a dark subway tunnel under the East River. Each must make the arduous trek home through record-breaking heat, nervously eyeing the thin plume of smoke above the skyline, though it's their private turmoils that loom largest. Told in the alternating voices of these charismatic but deeply flawed men, Little Disasters deftly cuts between the suspense of the citywide disaster and the history of secrets, lies, and losses that has brought these four intertwined lives to the brink. Smart, unsparing, and bitingly funny, Randall Klein's debut is an engrossing story of the bonds of love and family--and our unending urges to test them, even when we need them most.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Klein's sharply observant debut follows two young couples in hipster Brooklyn through a year of changes. Part of the novel takes place on a steamy summer day in 2010, the rest of it in the year leading up to that day. On July 19, a mysterious accident has shut down the subway system and closed off much of midtown Manhattan. Michael, an artist and furniture maker and Paul, an actor and paralegal, attempt to get back to Brooklyn to meet the woman they both love, Jenny, an aspiring novelist and Paul's wife. Michael's wife, Rebecca, a cookie entrepreneur, waits at home with their one-year-old son. The novel, told from the alternating points of view of Michael and Paul, plays the evolution of the affair between Michael and Jenny against the physical challenges the men face on their odysseys home. Klein is at his best making notes on the nuances of behavior in this particular tribe of Brooklynites advancing warily into maturity, and in tracking unsentimentally the progress of an affair. He loses his way when he ventures into high drama, as when he gives Jenny and Paul a baby who dies immediately after being born, or thrusts Paul into hero mode in a journey through a subway tunnel. These unfortunate operatic moments aside, Klein pulls off a well-composed chamber piece in which all four principal characters are treated with respect.
Customer Reviews
Full Heart
This is a book that will hurt your heart in a very good way. You will ache for each character in turn as you consider how the smallest decisions can yield enormous changes in a person's life. It will make you consider what is in our hands and out of our hands; how vulnerable we are, even in our safest places. This is a gorgeous book that make you stay up late, turning the pages and wondering how it will all turn out.