PRESTON FALLS: A Novel - Softcover

Gates, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679756434 ISBN 13: 9780679756439

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1999

Synopsis

"Beautifully written.... Gates [has a] pitch-perfect ear for contemporary speech...and...[a] keen, journalistic eye."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

In this comic, fiercely compassionate novel, David Gates, whose first novel Jernigan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, sends his protagonist on a visceral journey to the dark side of suburban masculinity, explores the claims youth makes on middle age, and the tenacious --at times perverse--power of love to assert itself.

When Doug Willis has a mid-life crisis, he doesn't join a gym or have an affair. Instead he gets himself arrested while camping with his wife and kids, takes a two month leave of absence from his PR job, and retreats to his farmhouse in rural Preston Falls--where he plugs in his guitar and tries to shut out his life.

While his wife, Jean, struggles to pay the bills and raise their sullen, skeptical kids, Willis's plans for hiatus crumble into Dewars-and-cocaine fueled disarray. A shattered window, an unguarded gun, and a shady small town attorney force a crisis--and Willis can't go home again. With its biting humor and harsh realism, Preston Falls confirms David Gates as a talent in the tradition of Russell Banks and Richard Ford: a master of dark truths and private longings.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"David Gates has a superb reporter's precision, an analyst's ear, a teenager's glee in exposing deception and a moralist's eye that is as unforgiving as Evelyn Waugh's."--New York Times Book Review

"A blistering marriage in free fall, Preston Falls is full of black humor."--Newsweek

"David Gates has produced the funniest, sharpest, most strangely exciting novel about men and women in a long time."--Maxim

"[Preston Falls] abounds with excellent peripheral characters, engaging imagery, deft style, skilled detail and humorous interludes."--The Rocky Mountain News

"It's very well done, with dialogue that rings true and all the accumulated nastiness that erupts as families disintegrate."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Preston Falls is mesmerizing, disturbing, a brilliantly overheard monologue--the nada of a man who has been there, done that, and is out of places to go."--The Boston Globe

"Gates is a masterful chronicler of the dynamics of a family meltdown."--Publisher's Weekly

From the Back Cover:

"A brilliantly written portrait of a man and a family in distress."--National Public Radio

"Preston Falls is mesmerizing, disturbing, a brilliantly overheard monologue --the nada of a man who's been there, done that, and is out of places to go."-- The Boston Globe

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0679756434
• ISBN 13: 9780679756439
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352