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THE BIG DOOR PRIZE

M.O. Walsh

The New York Times-bestselling author of My Sunshine Away returns with a captivating, quirky, and poignant novel about a mysterious machine that upends a small Louisiana town.
What would you do if you knew your life's potential?
That's the question facing the town of Deerfield, Louisiana, when a surprising machine appears in the local grocery store. Resembling a simple photo booth, the machine, sponsored by the company DNAMIX, promises to tell participants their potential in life - what their body and mind are capable of doingall based on the science of their DNA. All it takes is a quick swab of the cheek and two dollars to know what you could have been if everything worked out just so.

With just enough credibility to make the townspeople curious, the machine quickly enraptures nearly all of Deerfield. Soon enough, lives are upended based on the promise and possibility of one word: Olympian, Carpenter, Lover, Driver, Magician, bearing no mind that most of them have little to no life experience or talent to explain such a calling. Among them are Douglas Hubbard, the high school history teacher who, at age 40, has hit a wall in life; his wife, Cherilyn, who never thought to dream of more; Jacob Richieu, the son of the town mayor living in his dead brother's shadow; and even Father Pete, the local priest connected to the townspeople in unexpected ways.

Deeply moving and full of heartwarming eccentricity, THE BIG DOOR PRIZE explores the ways in which the glimmer of possibility can bring a community together, pull it apart, and reveal the power of self-discovery and second chances, even under the strangest of circumstances.

M.O. Walsh is the author of My Sunshine Away (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam February 2015). His fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Oxford American, The Southern Review, American Short Fiction, Epoch, and Best New American Voices, among others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi and is currently the director of the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans, where he lives and works, happily, with his wife and family.
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Published 2020-09-08 by Putnam

Comments

Think of The Big Door Prize like a beautiful box full of all the things that compose our lives: love, fate, chance, jealousy, sadness, jokes, desire, and music. M.O. Walsh gives us all this and more, page after page, until a reader feels like she knows a little bit more about everything there is worth knowing. One of the most big-hearted books you'll ever read, about so much, but, in the end, it's really about the secret of life: the specifics of caring.

Walsh skirts the edge of fantasy in this playful and touching tale... The novel transcends its quirky premise, offering many insights on the mysteries of the human heart.

What if a machine could tell you your life's potential? That's what happens when the DNAMix shows up at the local grocery store in a small Louisiana town. Pretty soon, the town's citizens are leaving their posts as teachers and shopkeepers to pursue their true callings.

French: Michel Lafon ; Korean: Jakkajungsin

The Big Door Prize calls attention to the ordinary, hard-won joys of real people. M. O. Walsh's second novel is a feel-good read in a down-home setting, with serious undertones.

The lives of a couple facing their mid-life crisis and a young man coming of age intersect in this humorous and hopeful novel. M.O. Walsh has never been afraid to go down into the darkest places of the human heart, but his truthfulness is balanced by a beautiful optimism, just as his sharp humor is leavened by his genuine affection for the layered, vital characters he creates. A wise, wry, twisty, and entertaining tale. I loved it.

Deadline, Variety, and others announced over the weekend that Apple will produce the TV series based on M.O. Walsh's THE BIG DOOR PRIZE: "In a competitive situation with multiple bidders, Apple has landed The Big Door Prize, a half-hour comedy based on M.O. Walsh's bestselling novel, with a 10-episode straight-to-series order. The project hails from Emmy-winning Schitt's Creek writer/executive producer David West Read, Skydance Television and Parasite producer CJ ENM/Studio Dragon." Read more...

[A] surprising and heartwarming contemporary drama about looking back and looking forward.readers of this singular, nuanced story will, quite possibly and without a machine as prompt, undertake their own personal reflection.

Walsh deploys a breezy writing style and a sharp sense of humor to explore some of the darker corners of human nature.

It's hard to believe that Walsh wrote this moving novel long before the COVID-19 pandemic, for there is eerie prescience in its soulful message that gratitude and grace are not to be taken for granted and that life can be upended in an instant.

The characters in The Big Door Prize are familiar yet curious - so much like my own neighbors that I began to weave myself into the story, considering other lives I might live if I were braver, pluckier. Walsh's novel is the ideal summer read, an immersive escape as well as a brilliant examination of free will vs. determinism.

Part mystery, all charm. The big prize here is for readers: a heartwarming and eccentric page-turner in the grand tradition of Southern literature that will keep you wondering until the very end. Walsh writes his characters with great respect to prove we're never too old to discover new things about ourselves.

Television rights sold to Skydance Television, with David West Read (Schitt's Creek) adapting. Skydance produces the hit Netflix shows Grace and Frankie and Altered Carbon and the Amazon show Jack Ryan, so between them and the Schitt's Creek writer, they should make a fun show out of THE BIG DOOR PRIZE.

An eccentric, well-written small-town novel jam-packed with appealing characters and their dreams.