We Are Not Ourselves - Softcover

Thomas, Matthew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594138915 ISBN 13: 9781594138911

Publisher: Large Print Pr, 2015

Synopsis

The product of a stormy upbringing in an Irish Catholic enclave of New York City, Eileen craves stability. Coming of age in the early sixties, she meets and marries a young scientist named Edmund Leary. But while Eileen wants more for her family, Ed won't give up teaching for a better-paid job. Inadvertently Eileen starts to climb her own career ladder in nursing. She pushes Ed into finding a new home, but it becomes clear that his resistance is part of a deeply troubling psychological shift.

About this title

Review:

"[A] masterly debut."
--"Vanity Fair"

""The Corrections." "The Art of Fielding." Most years, there's a mega-hyped American epic that's heralded as a literary breakout. This year's, a saga about an Irish-American family in Queens, is refreshingly unpretentious but packed with soul--and profoundly moving characters." --"Entertainment Weekly," The Must List
"A stunning, stunning book...Possibly the most engaged I've been with any book this year."
--Phil Klay, "Year in Reading" on TheMillions.com

"The greatest Alzheimer's novel yet..."We Are Not Ourselves" exceeds the usual boundaries of fiction on the subject."
--Stefan Merril Block, NewYorker.com

""We Are Not Ourselves" is a powerfully moving book, and the figure of Eileen Leary mother, wife, daughter, lover, nurse, caretaker, whiskey drinker, upwardly mobile dreamer, retrenched protector of values is a real addition to our literature.
Chad Harbach, author of "The Art of Fielding""

""We Are Not Ourselves" is wonderful on the position of the striving classes and our longings on behalf of our families, and on how we deal with unexpected disaster. It s as fiercely passionate and big-hearted and memorable as Eileen, its I m-holding-this-family-together-with-my-two-hands protagonist."
Jim Shepard, author of "Project X" and "You Think That s Bad""

[A] masterly debut.
"Vanity Fair""

"The Corrections." "The Art of Fielding." Most years, there s a mega-hyped American epic that s heralded as a literary breakout. This year s, a saga about an Irish-American family in Queens, is refreshingly unpretentious but packed with soul and profoundly moving characters. "Entertainment Weekly," The Must List"

A gripping family saga, maybe the best I've read since "The Corrections."
Melissa Maerz, "Entertainment Weekly," Grade: A"

[A] devastating debut novel . . . an honest, intimate family story with the power to rock you to your core . . . [a] wrenchingly credible main character . . . rich, sprawling . . . Mr. Thomas s narrow scope (despite a highly eventful story) and bull s-eye instincts into his Irish characters fear, courage and bluster bring to mind the much more compressed style of Alice McDermott . . . Part of what makes "We Are Not Ourselves" so gripping is the credible yet surprising ways in which it reveals the details of any neuroscientist s worst nightmare . . . This is a book in which a hundred fast-moving pages feel like a lifetime and everything looks different in retrospect. As in the real world, the reader s point of view must change as often as those of the characters . . . This is one of the frankest novels ever written about love between a caregiver and a person with a degenerative disease. The great French film Amour conveyed the emotional aspects of such a relationship, but Mr. Thomas spares nothing and still makes it clear how deeply in love these soul mates are. Janet Maslin, "New York Times""

About the Author:

Matthew Thomas was born in the Bronx and grew up in Queens. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he has an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His New York Times-bestselling novel We Are Not Ourselves has been shortlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. He lives with his wife and twin children in New Jersey.

About this edition

• Publisher: Large Print Pr
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1594138915
• ISBN 13: 9781594138911
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 841