The Nuclear Age
Language: English
Published by Alfred a Knopf Inc, Westminister, Maryland, U.S.A., 1985
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used

Seller: Rose's Books IOBA, Harwich Port, MA, U.S.A.Rose's Books IOBA
AbeBooks seller since November 20, 2001
Association member: IOBA
Condition: Used - Near fine
£ 17.11
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
First edition. Hard cover binding, 312 pp. Author won the National Book Award with previous novel. Near fine in dustjacket.
Seller Inventory # 008726
- Title
- The Nuclear Age
- Author
- O'Brien, Tim
- Publisher
- Alfred a Knopf Inc, Westminister, Maryland, U.S.A.
- Publication year
- 1985
- Condition
- Near Fine
- Dust jacket
- Near Fine
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 039454286X
- ISBN 13
- 9780394542867
- Edition
- First Edition
- Dimensions
- 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall
- Seller catalogs
- Rare Modern First Editions
It’s 1995 and William Cowling is digging a hole in his backyard. He is forty-nine, and after years and years of pent-up terror he has finally found the courage of a fighting man. And so a hole. A hold that he hopes will one day be large enough to swallow up his almost fifty years’ worth of fear. A hole that causes his twelve-year-old daughter to call him a “nutto,” and his wife to stop speaking to him. A hole that William will not stop digging and out of which rise scenes of his past to play themselves out in his memory.
The scenes take him back to his quietly peculiar adolescence (No. 2 pencils had a surprising significance), to his college days, down into the underground, and up through several stabs at “normal” adulthood . . . they take him from Montana to Florida, from Cuba to California, from Kansas to New York to Germany and back to Montana as he makes him way through an often mystifying—but just as often hilarious —labyrinth of fears and desires, obsessions and obligations, blessed madness and less-than-blessed sobriety . . . they take him into the lives of a shrink who’s a whiz a role reversal and of a dizzying eccentric cheerleader; of radical misfits and misfit radicals; of an ethereal stewardess (the traveling man’s dream); and two guerilla commandos who mix shtick and nightmare in their tactical brew. And each scene is a reminder of the unbargained-for-terror that has guided him to the bottom of his hole. For this digging is his final act of “prudence and sanity”—he’s taking control, getting there first, robbing his fears of their power to destroy . . . or so he believes. But is this act really sane? Is his daughter’s estimation of his emotional well-being (“pretty buggo, too”) the only truly sane statement being made? Is sanity even the issue? In the dazzling final scenes, William turns from the hole—from his past and from his future 0 to himself, digging deeper and deeper to find his answers.
The Nuclear Age is pyrotechnically funny and moving, courageous and irreverent. It takes on our supreme unacknowledged terror (whose reality we both refuse to accept and all too easily accommodate ourselves to), finds it lunatic core, and shapes it into a story that speaks of, and to, an entire age: our own, our nuclear age. It is an extraordinary novel.
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Rose's Books IOBA
Harwich Port, MA, U.S.A.
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|---|---|---|
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Welcome. Rose's Books (www.roses-books.com) has collections lovingly gathered over many years by resident readers & scholars. We have a wonderful collection of rare biographies, rare children's books, and modern first editions. We also stock history, literature, and special titles in the humanities and sciences. If you have quality books for sale, please contact us. Enjoy browsing our online store located on beautiful Cape Cod. We pride ourselves on treating customers the way we would wish to be treated.…
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Rose's Books IOBA
MA, U.S.A.
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