The Loss of Leon Meed - Softcover

Emmons, Josh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007592906 ISBN 13: 9780007592906

Publisher: The Friday Project, 2015

Synopsis

‘Josh Emmons is the real deal: a major league prose writer who has fun in every sentence; you want to keep reading him for the pure pleasure of his company’ Jonathan Franzen

Over the course of one December, ten residents of Eureka, California, are brought together by a mysterious man, Leon Meed, who repeatedly and inexplicably appears – in the ocean, at a local music club, clinging to the roof of a barrelling truck, standing in the middle of Main Street’s oncoming traffic – and then, as if by magic, disappears.

Each witness to these bewildering events – young and old, married and single, punk and evangelical, black, white and Korean – interprets them differently, yet all of their lives are irrevocably changed. Over time, these ten characters, previously only tenuously connected, form a strange community of shared experience.

Highly original and brilliantly written, Josh Emmons’s award-winning debut is a mystery, a love story and something else entirely.

About this title

Product Description:

Loss of Leon Meed

Review:

‘Here’s how you know Josh Emmons is the real deal: he’s created a full spectrum of Californian characters who are ludicrous and ill-behaved and lovable in equal measure; he’s a major-league prose writer who has fun in every sentence without ever showing off or hitting a phony note; and you want to keep reading him for the pure pleasure of his company’ Jonathan Franzen

‘Emmons writes with crisp, gratifying authority. The Loss of Leon Meed has considerable appeal ... and succeeds in finding comic potential in unlikely places’ New York Times

‘Emmons cycles through and illuminates the plights of his diverse, crowded cast – including a recovering alcoholic, an overweight therapist and a Korean hippie – with a finesse that approaches that of a seasoned literary ventriloquist. The characters’ stories take on a cumulative, mesmerizing rhythm’ New York Times Book Review

‘An audaciously ambitious first novel ... The Loss of Leon Meed is a canny status report on the American soul ... engaging, enigmatic’ Los Angeles Times

‘A mystical ensemble fable about chance and fate and the importance of not giving up ... Emmons has sizable talent [and] a real shape-shifter's gift for imagining his way into lives different from, and especially older than, his own... There’s wonderful stuff here, little stylistic pleats, serifs and tailfins that root in the mind and just won't budge. Its central enigma rewards speculation’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘As remarkable and moving a portrait of America as I have seen in some time’ Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

About this edition

• Publisher: The Friday Project
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0007592906
• ISBN 13: 9780007592906
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304