num_pages: 322
description: For fans of Jennifer Egan Jonathan Franzen Lorrie Moore and Curtis Sittenfeld Among the Ten Thousand Things is a dazzling first novel a portrait of an American family on the cusp of irrevocable change and a startlingly original story of love and time lost. Jack Shanley is a well-known New York artist charming and vain who doesnt mean to plunge his family into crisis. His wife Deb gladly left behind a difficult career as a dancer to raise the two children she adores. In the ensuing years she has mostly avoided coming face-to-face with the weaknesses of the man she married. But then an anonymously sent package arrives in the mail: a cardboard box containing sheaves of printed emails chronicling Jacks secret life. The package is addressed to Deb but its delivered into the wrong hands: her childrens. With this vertiginous opening begins a debut that is by turns funny wise and indescribably moving. As the Shanleys spin apart into separate orbits leaving New York in an attempt to regain their bearings fifteen-year-old Simon feels the allure of adult freedoms for the first time while eleven-year-old Kay wanders precariously into a grown-up world she cant possibly understand. Writing with extraordinary precision humor and beauty Julia Pierpont has crafted a timeless hugely enjoyable novel about the bonds of family lifetheir brittleness and their resilience.
language: English
title: Among the Ten Thousand Things
publisher: Random House