We Are Not Ourselves - by Matthew Thomas (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><b>The instant <i>New York Times</i> bestseller <i>The</i> <i>Washington Post</i> calls a "stunning...superbly rendered" novel, and <i>Entertainment Weekly</i> describes as "a gripping family saga, maybe the best...since <i>The Corrections</i>."</b> <p/><b>As an Irish immigrant in Queens in 1941, Eileen has dreamed of more in her life--but when she and her family seem to be moving closer to that dream, devastation hits and they must learn how to not only hold on to their reality, but to each other.</b> <p/>Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on how much alcohol has been consumed. From an early age, Eileen wished that she lived somewhere else. She sets her sights on upper class Bronxville, New York, and an American Dream is born. <p/> Driven by this longing, Eileen places her stock and love in Ed Leary, a handsome young scientist, and with him begins a family. Over the years Eileen encourages her husband to want more: a better job, better friends, a better house. It slowly becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper, more incomprehensive psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son Connell try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known, and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future. <p/> Described by <i>The New York Times Book Review</i> as "A long, gorgeous epic, full of love and caring...one of the best novels you'll read this year," <i>We Are Not Ourselves </i>is a testament to our greatest desires and our greatest frailties. Through the lives of these characters, Thomas charts the story of the American Century. The result is, "stunning...The joys of this book are the joys of any classic work of literature--for that is what this is destined to become--superbly rendered small moments that capture both an individual life and the universality of that person's experience" (<i>The Washington Post</i>).<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>"In his powerful and significant debut novel, Thomas masterfully evokes one woman's life in the context of a brilliantly observed Irish working-class milieu....a definitive portrait of American social dynamics in the 20th century. Thomas's emotional truthfulness combines with the novel's texture and scope to create an unforgettable narrative." <br> --<i>Publishers Weekly</i>, starred review<br><br><i>We Are Not Ourselves</i> 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." <br> --Chad Harbach, author of <i>The Art of Fielding</i><br><br><i>We Are Not Ourselves</i> 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.<br> --Jim Shepard, author of <i>Project X</i> and <i>You Think That's Bad</i><br><br>"A great novel about hope, heartbreak, family, and failure in America.<br> --<i>Esquire</i><br><br>Okay, straight out, this novel is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. <i>We Are Not Ourselves</i> delivers the deepest, most involving and best pleasures of reading, the pleasures that have you lose your hours while curled up in a comfy couch, that have you sneaking looks and reading when you should be doing other things. A true epic in the best sense of the word, encompassing the big great gorgeous heartbreak that was our American Century. You doubt me. Please do not. Each page is suffused with a relentless and probing genius, as well as a generous and humane heart, and the result not only explodes across the darkening sky, but remains with you long after you've finished the last page and handed it to someone you love. So long as there are novels like <i>We Are Not Ourselves</i>, so long as there are writers like Matthew Thomas, the form of the novel is more than alive, it is thriving, palpitant."<br> --Charles Bock, author of <i>Beautiful Children</i><br><br>The mind is a mystery no less than the heart. In <i>We Are Not Ourselves</i>, Matthew Thomas has written a masterwork on both, as well as an anatomy of the American middle class in the 20th Century. It's all here: how we live, how we love, how we die, how we carry on. And Thomas does it with the epic sweep and small pleasures of the very best fiction. It's humbling and heartening to read a book this good.<br> --Joshua Ferris, author of <i>Then We Came to the End</i><br><br><b> </b> <p/>"A stunning, stunning book...Possibly the most engaged I've been with any book this year." <p/>--Phil Klay, "Year in Reading" on TheMillions.com<br><br>"<i>The Corrections</i>. <i>The Art of Fielding</i>. 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." --<i>Entertainment Weekly</i>, The Must List<br><br>"[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 <i>We Are Not Ourselves</i> 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, <i>New York Times</i><br><br>"[A] masterly debut."<br> --<i>Vanity Fair</i><br><br>"A gripping family saga, maybe the best I've read since <i>The Corrections</i>." <br> --Melissa Maerz, <i>Entertainment Weekly</i>, Grade: A<br><br>"A long, gorgeous, epic, full of love and caring....one of the best novels you'll read this year." <br> --<i>New York Times Book Review</i><br><br>"An ambitious, beautifully written novel about ambition and what it can do and not do [that] deals with the classic American Dream in all its messy complications." <br> --<i>USA Today</i><br><br>"Astonishing and powerful...Thomas's finely observed tale is riveting. As a reflection of American society in the late 20th century, it's altogether epic, sweeping the reader along on a journey that's both inexorable and poignant." --<i>People</i><br><br>"Stunning...The novel is a formidable tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, to the restorative and ultimately triumphant supremacy of love over life's adversities....The joys of this book are the joys of any classic work of literature -- for that is what this is destined to become -- superbly rendered small moments that capture both an individual life and the universality of that person's experience." <br> --<i>The Washington Post</i><br><br>"The greatest Alzheimer's novel yet...<i>We Are Not Ourselves</i> exceeds the usual boundaries of fiction on the subject."<br> --Stefan Merril Block, NewYorker.com<br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>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 <i>New York Times </i>bestselling novel <i>We Are Not Ourselves </i>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.
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