The Rise & Fall of Great Powers: A Novel
As a child, Tooly Zylberberg led a peripatetic existence. Paul, her less-than-attentive father, took her from from her unfit mother, and he and Tooly traveled from Australia to Bangkok, thanks to his short-term, government-funded computer assignments.  Left to her own devices much of the time, it seemed inevitable that Tooly would fall in with a ragtag group of ex-pats—mercurial Sarah, Russian literature lover Humphrey, and their Svengali-like leader, Venn—who took her under their collective wing.  What is not predictable, however, is that Tooly will be abducted once again when Venn and company elevate her from mascot to compatriot. Rachman, celebrated for The Imperfectionists (2010), spans the last 30 years in this tale of a rocky road to adulthood. Over the course of flashbacks and fast-forward escapades, Tooly gradually pieces together the jigsaw of her unconventional life to confront a complete picture that isn’t always comforting. Rachman’s kaleidoscopic second novel demonstrates that one’s family is very often made up of the people you find and who find you along the way. --Carol Haggas