10:04: Ben Lerner - Softcover

Lerner, Ben

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847088937 ISBN 13: 9781847088932

Publisher: Granta Books, 2015

Synopsis

In the past year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child. Now, in a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water. In prose that Jonathan Franzen has called 'hilarious...cracklingly intelligent...and original in every sentence', Lerner's new novel charts an exhilarating course through the contemporary landscape of sex, friendship, memory, art and politics, and captures what it is like to be alive right now.

About this title

Review:

'Reading Ben Lerner gives me the tingle at the base of my spine that happens whenever I encounter a writer of true originality. He is a courageous, immensely intelligent artist who panders to no one and yet is a delight to read. Anyone interested in serious contemporary literature should read Ben Lerner, and 10:04 is the perfect place to start' --Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Marriage Plot

'Ben Lerner is a brilliant novelist, and one unafraid to make of the novel something truly new. 10:04 is a work of endless wit, pleasure, relevance, and vitality' --Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers

'Ben Lerner is a brilliant novelist, and one unafraid to make of the novel something truly new. 10:04 is a work of endless wit, pleasure, relevance, and vitality' --Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers

'I expected to love and, with relief, did love Ben Lerner's second novel 10:04' --'Book of the Year', Joe Dunthorne, Observer

'[Full of] twisty cleverness and originality' --Literary Review

'10:04 is an even better book than Leaving the Atocha Station, still introspective but more contemplative and tender. It's only the first week of January but I doubt I'll read a finer novel this year' ***** --Daily Telegraph

'Brave and humane... 10:04 is deeply political because it looks imaginatively at our unequal world and creates a renewed sense of possibility about the future' --Independent on Sunday

'10:04 is an accomplished work, and a mature one, and will move as many as it maddens' --Independent

'An impressive and even entertaining book - very well-written and scarily clever' --Daily Mail

'Lerner tiptoes between satire and sincerity to serve up a sparky comedy about the first-world problem of how to live well in the knowledge of wider suffering' --Metro

'Brilliant... Smart, self-absorbed and entertaining, Lerner's musings are tricksy and self-referential, which could be as dull as ditchwater in the wrong hands, but here the literary fun and games are fresh and original' -- Sunday Express

'Lerner carries off his conceit with aplomb, thanks to his intelligence, seriousness and gift for social satire' --Summer Reads, FT

'Remarkable... Lerner is doing something different with his metafictional plot: he's showing us, in good faith, how fiction gets written'
'This is an extremely funny book, and a political one. Reading 10:04 is far from a bleak experience. It is filled with moments of transcendence and glimpses of alternative ways of being and perceiving. As the narrator explains to his imagined daughter: "Art has to offer something other than stylized despair." In this dazzling, absorbing book Lerner certainly does' --Guardian

'Lerner's masterclass in metafiction breaches the boundaries between fiction and real-life, narrator and author...this is more than just another navel-gazing Brooklyn novel. It's a clever, funny discourse on the processes of writing fiction, the end result 'a work that, like a poem, is neither fiction nor nonfiction, but a flickering between them.' Lucy Scholes, Observer

'10:04 is a clever book. Lerner's style is tricksy and super-confident. The chronology leaps about nimbly, and modish black-and-white photos illustrate the text. One has to admire the virtuosity' --Independent On Sunday

About the Author:

Born in Kansas in 1979, BEN LERNER is the author of three books of poetry, The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, and the recipient of a Howard Foundation Fellowship. In 2011 he became the first American to win the Munster State Prize for International Poetry. He teaches in the writing program at Brooklyn College. His first novel was Leaving the Atocha Station.

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1847088937
• ISBN 13: 9781847088932
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256