From the Bookershortlisted author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour comes a hilarious novel about fathers sons thwarted dreams and confronting the reality of who we really areThis is a fine American novel about family love and a decent but flawed man trying to be better In dark times like these I cant recommend this book too highly Its strong Stephen King on TwitterCharlie Barnes is a midcentury man devoted to his newspaper and his landline But Charlie is about to get dragged into our troubled age by his storyteller son who has a different idea of him than he has of himself Then there are his other children his exwives present wife business clients friends and acquaintances all of whom have their competing opinions of CharlieHe certainly seems simple enough hes a striver a romantic and a thoroughgoing capitalist But suddenly blindsided by the Great Recession and a dose of bad news he might have to rethink his life from top to bottom and on short notice What makes a man real What makes him good And how does the story we tell about ourselves line up with the lives that we actually liveFunny moving and formally a work of genius A Calling for Charlie Barnes is quite literally the book Joshua Ferris was born to write Garth Risk Hallberg author of City on FireDazzling Mindblowing About as much fun as you can have without risking arrest Richard Russo author of Empire FallsWonderful fast and deep urgent and brilliant A hilarious intimate and scathing takedown of so many...
