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Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

James Hynes

One Man, one day, and a novel bursting with drama, comedy, and humanity.

Kevin Quinn is a standard-variety American male: middle-aged, liberal-leaning, self-centered, emotionally damaged, generally determined to avoid both pain and responsibility. As his relationship with his girlfriend approaches a turning point, and his career seems increasingly pointless, he decides to secretly fly to a job interview in Austin, Texas. Aboard the plane, Kevin is simultaneously attracted to the young woman in the seat next to him and panicked by a new wave of terrorism in Europe and the UK. He lands safely with neuroses intact and full of hope that the job, the expansive city, and the girl from the plane might yet be his chance for reinvention. His next eight hours make up this novel, a tour-de-force of mordant humor, brilliant observation, and page-turning storytelling.

James Hynes is the author of the novels The Lecturer's Tale, Wild Colonial Boy, the stories Publish & Perish (all New York Times Notable Books of the Year), and the novel Kings of Infinite Space.

Available products
Book Published 2010-03-01 by Reagan Arthur Books

Comments

Hynes is a rare writer. He is brilliant and humane, and he's created a novel that's as involving as it is dark, as compassionate as it is sad. It's a shocking, original masterpiece, and it is deeply, painfully American, in every sense of the word -- whatever that word has come to mean. NEXT is the kind of novel that leaves you reeling, almost speechless, frightened, scared to consider what it all means. (Michael Schaub)

Hynes writes like Joyce on Quaaludes, in spiky, gorgeous language, with an eye for detail that is occasionally shocking in its apt particularity. He has an effortless recall of pop culture that is unparalleled in contemporary fiction. NEXT occurs on one Bloomsday-like imaginary day and runs backward and forward in time to a heart-stopping finale that is one of the best endings of any novel I have ever read. - Kate Christensen

... funny, surprising, and sobering ... The final 50 pages are unlike anything in the recent literature of our response to terrorisma tour de force of people ennobled in the face of random horror. (starred review)

... an essential piece of American literature that is both of its time and ultimately without present compare; a novel that is about us, all of us...

Hynes's novel contains many memorable passages and comic riffs; and his decision to shape the book around its high-stakes ending (50 pages of riveting, vivid, and unstoppable reading) does, ultimately justify and define the whole. (Claire Messud)

I already knew that James Hynes was the master of satirical, high-octane fiction but I did not expect him to be the genius of detail, too. Or to be so tender. NEXT - in which Kevin goes to Texas for a job interview and gets sidetracked by his lifelong quest for love - is that rarity, a lapidary novel of small compass and brief time frame which delivers a punch of global relevance. It is touching, shocking, intelligent, and - at least where matters of the heart are concerned - profoundly and subversively candid. ? Jim Crace

I'm a longtime James Hynes fan, but NEXT is one of the most surprising, delightful, compulsively readably and ultimately profound novels I've read in some time. I didn't know whether to cry or laugh or cheer when I finished it, so I just went ahead and did all three, then started over at the beginning. ? Laura Lippman