num_pages: 135
description: Can one man come to terms with his past in one of the greatest short novels ever written?Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children; at odds with his vain, successful father; failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as ''the type that loses the girl''); and in a financial mess. In the course of one climactic day he reviews his past mistakes and spiritual malaise, until a mysterious, philosophizing con man grants him a glorious, illuminating moment of truth and understanding and offers him one last hope.
language: English
title: Seize the Day
titlecomplete: Seize the Day
characters: Wilhelm Adler
genres: Fiction, American, Literature, Classics, Novels, Nobel Prize, New York, 20th Century, Novella, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 12154
places: New York City, New York
awards: awardedAt: -410198400000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction
publisher: Penguin