A Stranger on the Planet

A “touching and funny” novel of a dysfunctional family and one man’s struggle to both get away from them and to hold them close (Publishers Weekly).
 
In the summer of 1969, twelve-year-old Seth lives with his unstable mother, Ruth, and his brother and sister in a two-bedroom apartment in New Jersey. His father lives with his new wife in a ten-room house—and has no interest in Seth and his siblings.
 
Seth is dying to escape from his mother’s craziness and suffocating love, her marriage to a man she’s known for two weeks, and his father’s cold disregard. Over the coming decades, he will become the keeper of his family’s memories and secrets—at the same time emotionally isolating himself from all those who love him, especially his mother.
 
But Ruth is also Seth’s muse, and as he stumbles through life, dating a lesbian and marrying a shiksa, their bond can never really be broken . . .
 
“Funny, honest and obsessive . . . Adam Schwartz is one part Philip Roth, but with a neurosis all his own.” —Gish Jen, author of World and Town
 
“With exhilarating wit, skill and passion Adam Schwartz covers more than thirty years in Seth’s life as he fights with, negotiates, distances himself from and embraces his vivid, difficult relatives. A Stranger on the Planet brings us a hero who is almost heroically anti-heroic, and who can be counted on to almost always act, endearingly, in his own worst interests. I would happily have followed him anywhere.” —Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street