Among the Ten Thousand Things

NATIONAL BESTSELLER For fans of Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen, Lorrie Moore, and Curtis Sittenfeld, "Among the Ten Thousand Things" 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.
Jack Shanl [...]
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER For fans of Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen, Lorrie Moore, and Curtis Sittenfeld, "Among the Ten Thousand Things" 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.
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.
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.
Praise for "Among the Ten Thousand Things"
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. Helen Schulman, "The New York Times Book Review"
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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. Moira Hodgson, "The Wall Street Journal"
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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 "Entertainment Weekly"
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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 "Gone Girl." Maureen Corrigan, NPR s "Fresh Air"
Tender, delicately perceptive . . . Pierpont s voice is wry and confident, and she is a fine anthropologist of New York life. "The Washington Post"
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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. "O: The Oprah Magazine"
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Adebut 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. Meredith Turits, "Vanity Fair"
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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. "San Francisco Chronicle" "From the Hardcover edition.""