{"product_id":"nine-shiny-objects-a-novel-isbn-9780062984418","title":"Nine Shiny Objects: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 PEN\/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"In this extraordinary novel, Castleberry brilliantly hopscotches from person to person, from era to era, while somehow making all this fancy footwork look effortless and essential.\" - Jenny Offill, author of \u003cem\u003eDepartment of Speculation\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWeather\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA luminous debut novel in the tradition of DeLillo and Egan, chronicling the eerily intersecting lives of a series of American dreamers\u003cbr\u003ewhose unforeseen links reveal the divided heart of a haunted nation—and the battered\u003cbr\u003egrace that might lead to its salvation\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJune 26, 1947. Headlines across America report the sighting of nine\u003cbr\u003epulsating lights flying over the Cascade Mountains at speeds surpassing any\u003cbr\u003eaircraft. In Chicago, inspired by the news, Oliver Danville, a failed actor now\u003cbr\u003ereduced to a mediocre pool hustler, hitchhikes west in a fever-dream quest for\u003cbr\u003ea possible sign from above that might illuminate his true calling. A chance\u003cbr\u003eencounter with Saul Penrod, an Idaho farmer, and his family sets in motion the\u003cbr\u003ebirth of “the Seekers”—a collective of outcasts, interlopers, and idealists devoted\u003cbr\u003eto creating a society where divisions of race, ethnicity, and sexuality are a\u003cbr\u003ething of the past. When Claudette Donen, a waitress on the lam from her\u003cbr\u003esuffocating family, encounters the group, she is compulsively drawn to Oliver’s\u003cbr\u003esister Eileen, but before she is able to join the enigmatic community, it has\u003cbr\u003evanished.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eReunited across the country, the Seekers attempt to settle in the\u003cbr\u003esuburbs of Long Island. One night, their purpose suddenly revealed, a stranger emerges,\u003cbr\u003eand a horrific crime ensues. In the decades that follow, the perpetrators,\u003cbr\u003esurvivors, and their children will be forced to face the consequences of what\u003cbr\u003ehappened—a reckoning that will involve Charlie Ranagan, a traveling salesman; Max\u003cbr\u003eFelt, a dissolute late-1960s rock star; Alice Linwood, an increasingly paranoid\u003cbr\u003eradio host; Stanley West, a struggling African American poet; Marly Feldberg, a\u003cbr\u003eGreenwich Village painter; and Debbie Vasquez, a Connecticut teenager trapped\u003cbr\u003eby an avalanche of midnight legacies. Each will prove to be a piece of a puzzle\u003cbr\u003ethat, when assembled, reveals a shocking truth about the clash between the\u003cbr\u003eoptimism of those who seek inspiration from spacious skies, and the venom of\u003cbr\u003eothers who relish the underworld—not only via conspiratorial maneuverings, but the\u003cbr\u003eliteral unearthing of the dead. The result is one of the most exciting, and\u003cbr\u003eunforgettable, debut novels in recent memory, and the launch of a major career\u003cbr\u003ein American letters.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e\"Castleberry has pulled off quite a feat. \u003cem\u003eNine Shiny Objects\u003c\/em\u003e is an intricately plotted novel of big ideas that’s driven by fully realized characters. I couldn’t wait to turn the page, yet I wanted to linger in each chapter.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKelli Jo Ford, author of Crooked Hallelujah\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Marked by literary ambition. ... This is a story about how our individual histories follow us, about light versus dark, but also about our clouded perception of America—and how it continues to divide us.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eElle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A triumph. Author Brian Castleberry’s ability to inhabit each character’s mind, giving each distinct tics in their thought and speech patterns, makes their self-righteousness, confusion, guilt, and hope achingly legible. ... Hidden behind the facade of a book about UFOs is a novel about 20th century America, its flaws and its fears.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWashington City Paper\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"[Castleberry's] deft treatment of the past half-century of U.S. political and cultural history is by turns lively and absurd, violent and ecstatic, just as those times were. ... Suffused by mystery and melancholy, but also with occasional laugh-out-loud slapstick and “Twilight Zone” weirdness.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRichmond Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Castleberry crafts a superlatively original tale that incorporates UFOs, government conspiracies, counterculture and hope in this delicately layered novel.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Ridgefield Press\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The depth and intricacy of the plotting is really something to see, connections on connections on connections that spider out from our titular objects in a manner that cleverly evokes the sorts of red-thread connection webs that we associate with conspiracy theory.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Maine Edge\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Impressive...  Memorable characters inhabit a surprising, engaging story of American idealism and its dark opposite.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Each character’s chapter has its own voice, and swells with its own concerns, but they all crackle with tension and linger on loss....The perspectives overlap, but the composite leaves some questions unanswered, some connections intriguingly unrevealed....Castleberry's memorable tale probes fissures and anxieties that are undeniably current.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Discovering the nature of the characters’ associations and intersections across the chapters is one of the richest pleasures of the book. Another pleasure: the detailed portraits of 20th-century American life. Each chapter is a neatly packed and well-researched time capsule,...the close-clinging omniscient narration nimbly taking on the voices of each decade.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Castleberry proves very adept at altering each chapter’s style and pacing to reflect the different personalities. Moreover, his evocation of each era is excitingly vibrant and authentic... These characters pop off the page, with one composite character—America herself—emerging brilliantly from the gestalt.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLocus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"It’s worth it to take your time and savor this one.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Caroming across the changing American social and cultural landscape through the Cold War decades, Brian Castleberry's ambitious, shining novel explores the morphing vision of \"America\" from nine deeply felt, intricately connected perspectives. A timely book about our ideals, hopes, disillusionments, and their shadowy consequences, \u003cem\u003eNine Shiny Objects \u003c\/em\u003eis a significant, daring debut that speaks keenly to our current times.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAsako Serizawa, author of Inheritors\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Sharply-tuned, funny, satisfyingly strange, and preternaturally poised, unspooling in immaculate prose. Brian Castleberry has that rare, can’t-be-taught ability to turn smoothly at any point in any direction, giving each sentence, no matter how casual, a quiet current of electric suspense.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWilliam Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Barbarian Days\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Scrappy and smart, intently observed and often darkly funny, these people navigate lives where everyday struggle and pleasure ride precariously on a deep undercurrent of menace.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eChelsey Johnson, author of Stray City\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The truly shining objects are the nine stories that make up this gripping, shapeshifting novel. A debut out of this world.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHernan Diaz, author of In the Distance\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In this extraordinary novel, Castleberry brilliantly hopscotches from person to person, from era to era, while somehow making all this fancy footwork look effortless and essential.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJenny Offill, New York Times bestselling author of Department of Speculation and Weather\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"When, in 1947, a Navy pilot reports that he’s seen nine shiny objects flying over the Cascade Mountains, he sets off a chain reaction that affects nine characters, whose lives intersect in remarkable ways over the course of the following four decades. What Castleberry has written is not a novel about UFOs or cults or rock-and-roll but rather a literary saga that dauntlessly explores what it takes to believe.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRachel Beanland, author of Florence Adler Swims Forever\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mariner Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44889499893989,"sku":"NP9780062984418","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780062984418.jpg?v=1730231384","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/nine-shiny-objects-a-novel-isbn-9780062984418","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}