Beautiful Children: A Novel

Beautiful Children: A Novel

TheÂ New York TimesÂ bestseller by the author ofÂ the forthcoming novelÂ Alice & Oliver | Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters | AÂ New York TimesÂ Notable Book
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â€œOne word: bravo.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review
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â€œTruly powerful . . . Beautiful Children dazzles its readers on almost every page. . . . [Charles Bock] knows how to tug at your heart, and he knows how to make you laugh out loud, often on the same page, sometimes in the same sentence.â€â€”Newsweek

One Saturday night in Las Vegas, twelve-year-old Newell Ewing goes out with a friend and doesnâ€™t come home. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his mother, Lorraine, makes daily pilgrimages to her sonâ€™s room and tortures herself with memories. Equally distraught, the boyâ€™s father, Lincoln, finds himself wanting to comfort his wife even as he yearns for solace, a loving touch, any kind of intimacy.

As the Ewings navigate the mystery of whatâ€™s become of their son, the circumstances surrounding Newellâ€™s vanishing and other events on that same night reverberate through the lives of seemingly disconnected strangers: a comic book illustrator in town for a weekend of debauchery; a painfully shy and possibly disturbed young artist; a stripper who imagines moments from her life as if they were movie scenes; a bubbly teenage wiccan anarchist; a dangerous and scheming gutter punk; a band of misfit runaways. The people of Beautiful Children are â€œurban nomads,â€ each with a past to hide and a pain to nurture, every one of them searching for salvation and barreling toward destruction, weaving their way through a neon underworld of sex, drugs, and the spinning wheels of chance.

In this masterly debut novel, Charles Bock mixes incandescent prose with devious humor to capture Las Vegas with unprecedented scope and nuance and to provide a glimpse into a microcosm of modern America. Beautiful Children is an odyssey of heartache and redemption heralding the arrival of a major new writer.

Praise for Beautiful Children
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â€œExceptional . . . This novel deserves to be read more than once because of the extraordinary importance of its subject matter.â€â€”The Washington Post Book World
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â€œMagnificent . . . a hugely ambitious novel that succeeds . . . Beautiful Children manages to feel completely of its moment while remaining unaffected by literary trends. . . . Charles Bock is the real thing.â€â€”The New Republic
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â€œA wildly satisfying and disturbing literary journey, led by an author of blazing talent.â€â€”The Dallas Morning News
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â€œWholly originalâ€”dirty, fast, and hypnotic. The sentences flicker and skip and whirl.â€â€”Esquire
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â€œAn anxious, angry, honest first novel filled with compassion and clarity . . . The language has a rhythm wholly its ownâ€”at moments it is stunning, near genius.â€â€”A. M. Homes
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â€œFrom start to finish, Bock never stops tantalizing the reader.â€â€”San Francisco Chronicle
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â€œRich and compelling . . . captures the hallucinogenic setting like a fever dream.â€â€”Los Angeles Times

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Brand Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer Random House Trade Paperbacks
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 0812977963_used
Color White
ReleaseDate 2009-01-13
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780812977967

Country	USA
Brand	Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer	Random House Trade Paperbacks
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	0812977963_used
Color	White
ReleaseDate	2009-01-13
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780812977967

Beautiful Children: A Novel

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