Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Biography, Literature & Literary studies
Weblink
http://nicholasmontemarano.com/

THE BOOK OF WHY

Nicholas Montemarano

A novel that asks if love ever really has to die.

The power to solve your problems is within you-with the right sense of belief, the mind's ability to create success, happiness, and health is limitless. At least that's the philosophy of self-help author Eric Newborn, whose books and lectures have spawned a legion of devoted followers who swear that his ideas have pulled their lives from the brink. But after the traumatic loss of his wife, Eric is left to face the darker side of his own teachings, living as a recluse in the home they shared on Martha's Vineyard, struggling to reconcile his worldview with the pain he has suffered. It's a fundamental question that haunts him: why? When a fan with questions forces Eric to face the world once again, he's put on a path that might lead him towards the closure he seeks, but in astounding ways he could never begin to dream. At once a stirring portrait of a soul laid bare by grief and a celebration of coincidence and the magic of real connection, The Book of Why explores the deep powers of the heart and mind to shape the world around us, blurring the lines between loss and love, fate and free will, and despair and joy.

Nicholas Montemarano is the author of a story collection, If the Sky Falls (a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice) and a debut novel, A Fine Place. His short stories have appeared in Zoetrope, Esquire, Tin House, and The Pushcart Prize. He is Associate Professor of English at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.

Available products
Book Published 2013-01-01 by Little, Brown and Company
Book Published 2013-01-01 by Little, Brown and Company

Comments

Nicholas Montemarano writes a visceral, dug-in, experienced prose that stays in the mind.

Montemarano's brutal vision is tempered and complicated by an aching humanity. There is much pain, much grief and much dignity. He bleeds for his characters, and we do too.

Remarkable...deft storytelling and ruthless honesty...as dark and dazzling as a mine shaft studded with diamonds.

An American stylist capable of redeeming our darkest dreams.

Eric Newborn was once a celebrated author and public speaker. His self-help books preached the power of positive thinking and proclaimed the mind’s ability to control absolutely everything, from achieving job goals to fighting illness. But when the agonizing death of his wife left him desolate, he abandoned his writing and self-help career to focus on his own brand of self-pity. He is living a hermit’s life in a secluded island cabin when a young fan comes in search of him, looking for answers to some difficult questions about his abandoned philosophy. Pulled along by this eager devotee and other forces he cannot identify, Eric finds himself facing the questions that he has been avoiding since his terrible loss, and the answers he finds are far from anything he expected. Montemarano’s tale of love, grief, and promise is filled with emotion. By turns dark and hopeful, it is a beautiful journey of self-discovery that will inspire readers to question the accepted confines of the world, and leave them pondering the powers of belief.

A remarkable storyteller with a gift for the grittily noir.

Dark, powerful...Montemarano handles brutality and abjection with ambiguity and subtlety.

One of my favorite contemporary short-story writers, and, for my money, among the best we've got.

Montemarano is a brilliant, brazen truthseeker, and his fiction is as honest and as human as it comes.

Montemarano's writing is sure and clear and direct. He describes the banalities of everyday life with clinical precision.

The real thing in a literary landscape of overkill and over hype.