A Weekend in New York - Hardcover

Markovits, Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571350089 ISBN 13: 9780571350087

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2019

Synopsis

"In tender, compassionate prose and a deftly compressed time-scheme, Markovits glints through desire, ennui, misunderstanding, and love, illuminating his family so they collectively glow like a human panorama."--Jonathan Lethem "Deliciously poised, [a] hugely enjoyable and unashamedly old-fashioned novel."--Guardian Paul Essinger is a mid-ranking tennis professional on the ATP tour. His girlfriend Dana is an ex-model and photographer, and the mother of their two-year-old son, Cal. Together they form a tableau of the contented upper-middle-class New York family. But summer storms are blowing through Manhattan, and Paul's parents have come to stay in the build-up to the US Open. Over the course of the weekend, several generations of domestic tension are brought to boiling point . . . What does it mean to be a family? To be an individual? And how do we deal with the responsibilities these roles impose upon us? A Weekend In New York intertwines the politics of the household and the state to forge a luminous national portrait on a deceptively local scale. Recalling some of America's most celebrated novelists - this is John Updike's Rabbit for a new generation - Benjamin Markovits' writing reminds us of the heights that social realism can reach. Tolstoy claimed: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". But what if the happy families are actually the most unusual of all?

About this title

Review

"Markovits is excellent on gradations of failure. He also has the patience and precision to capture the elusive minutiae of our inner lives and interpersonal relationships."--Sunday Times (UK)

"Sophisticated and engrossing ... full of authentically captured emotion and wonderfully acute observation ... the imprint of Saul Bellow is evident [yet] Markovits's voice feels wholly his own ... This is a subtle, ruminative novel of family life, generational conflict and compromise [and] marks a novelist coming into his own."--Literary Review

"Intimate, funny and agile enough to capture the ever-shifting sands on which family life is built ... masterfully done."--Daily Mail

"Markovits' elegant, absorbing eighth novel ... He wears his sporting knowledge with a light, limber confidence. He's terrific on the fine-grained detail of the athlete's life ... What a fine ear Markovits has for the way people talk ... Incrementally, over the course of the weekend, we've grown attuned to the lives of Markovits's first-world also-rans, thrilled by their series of close-volley dramas like spectators in the stands of an outside court ... It feels momentous, a catalyst for change, and the outcome sends ripples into the future."--Guardian

"A book to be savored ... for its granular evocation of family life ... Hugely enjoyable."--Observer

"Markovits hits winner after winner"--Financial Times

About the Author

Benjamin Markovits grew up mostly in Texas. He left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the Romantics - an experience he wrote about in Playing Days, a novel. Since then he has taught high school English, worked at a left-wing cultural magazine, and written essays, stories and reviews for, among other publications, The New York Times, Granta, The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Paris Review. He has published seven novels, his most recent novel, You Don't Have To Live Like This, set in Detroit, was widely praised. Granta selected him as one of the Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. Markovits lives in London and is married, with a daughter and a son. He teaches Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0571350089
• ISBN 13: 9780571350087
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352