Chronic City (Vintage Contemporaries)
A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year.
A searing and wildly entertaining love letter to New York City from the bestselling author of Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude. Chase Insteadman, former child television star, has a new role in life--permanent guest on the Upper East Side dinner party circuit, where he is consigned to talk about his astronaut fiancée, Janice Trumbull, who is trapped on a circling Space Station. A chance encounter collides Chase with Perkus Tooth, a wily pop culture guru with a vicious conspiratorial streak and the best marijuana in town. Despite their disparate backgrounds and trajectories Chase and Perkus discover they have a lot in common, including a cast of friends from all walks of life in Manhattan. Together and separately they attempt to define the indefinable, and enter into a quest for the most elusive of things: truth and authenticity in a city where everything has a price. "Full of dark humor and dazzling writing" --Entertainment WeeklyBUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
I don't know why my favorite NYC authors always turn to this kind of madness pastiche novel - you know, wheelers and dealers, emotionally unavailable women, mad vagrants with vision, escaped tigers destroying the city, imaginary girlfriends in space, that sort of thing. I don't like the form but Lethem is good enough to have lodged many concepts from this novel permanently in my head. But I'm still wondering what it all means.
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