A Box of Matches: A Novel

Nicholson Baker

ISBN 10: 0375502874 / ISBN 13: 9780375502873

Published by Random House, 2003

About this Item

First Edition, 1st printing (per Random House policy of starting the number line at 2 before 2005). Bright, clean & tight copy, unread, in AS NEW condition. "Emmett has a wife and two children, a cat, and a duck, and he wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee in the dark, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks. What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no farther than Emmett's hearth and home. Nicholson Baker's extraordinary ability to describe and celebrate life in all its rich ordinariness has never been so beautifully achieved. Baker won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. He now returns to fiction with this lovely book, reminiscent of the early novels--Room Temperature and The Mezzanine--that established his reputation." [jacket copy] "The science of the insignificant has always been Baker's field of study. Treading a fine line between microcosmic dazzlement and banality, he has carved out a minuscule kingdom for himself. After his recent excursion into nonfiction with Double Fold, he returns to fiction with a novel in the classic Baker tradition. He is such an excellent writer, a master of descriptive detail with an unusual perspective on the world, that he can almost be forgiven for his tendency to focus on the mundane--almost."--Publishers Weekly. Pristine hardcover w/sharp corners & crisp edges, a square & tight binding, no age toning on pages.

Seller Inventory # RUB1989

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Box of Matches: A Novel
• Publisher: Random House
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375502874
• ISBN 13: 9780375502873
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

Emmett has a wife and two children, a cat, and a duck, and he wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee in the dark, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks.

What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no farther than Emmett’s hearth and home. Nicholson Baker’s extraordinary ability to describe and celebrate life in all its rich ordinariness has never been so beautifully achieved.

Baker won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. He now returns to fiction with this lovely book, reminiscent of the early novels—Room Temperature and The Mezzanine—that established his reputation.

About the Author

Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 and attended the Eastman School of Music and Haverford College. He has published five previous novels—The Mezzanine (1988), Room Temperature (1990), Vox (1992), The Fermata (1994), and The Everlasting Story of Nory (1998)—and three works of nonfiction, U and I (1991), The Size of Thoughts (1996), and Double Fold (2001), which won a National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1999 he founded the American Newspaper Repository, a collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century newspapers. He lives in Maine with his wife and two children.