{"product_id":"testing-the-current-isbn-9781590176023","title":"Testing the Current","description":"Growing up in a small upper Midwestern town in the late 1930s, young Tommy MacAllister is scarcely aware of the Depression, much less the rumblings of war in Europe. For his parents and their set, life seems to revolve around dinners and dancing at the country club, tennis dates and rounds of golf, holiday parties, summers on the Island, and sparkling occasions full of people and drinks and food and laughter. But curious as he is and impatient to grow up, Tommy will soon come to glimpse the darkness that lies beneath so much genteel complacency: hidden histories and embarrassing poor relations; the subtle (and not so subtle) slighting of the “help”; the mockery of President Roosevelt; and “the commandment they talked least about in Sunday school,” adultery.\u003cbr\u003e     \u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eTesting the Current\u003c\/i\u003e William McPherson subtly sets off his wide-eyed protagonist’s perspective with mature reflection and wry humor and surrounds him with a cast of vibrant characters, creating a scrupulously observed portrait of a place and time that will shimmer in readers’ minds long after the final page is turned.\"The dawning of the world's hard truths upon this boy's consciousness is depicted with a subtlety that . . . is something close to breathtaking. . . . We have here a book that looks for all the world like a piece of art.\" —Jonathan Yardley, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I can’t remember another novel which captures a Midwestern childhood—that mysterious unwritten-about world. . . . It could have been my town and my life.\" —Diane Johnson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"William McPherson’s first novel is an extraordinary, intelligent, powerful and, I believe, permanent contribution to the literature of family, childhood and memory. . . . From the first sentence of \u003ci\u003eTesting the Current \u003c\/i\u003eto the last, there is not one false note, one forced image. It is a novel written with great skill, and with love. It’s what most good first novels aspire to be.\" —Russell Banks, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e William McPherson (b. 1933) is a Pulitzer Prize–winning literary critic, editor, journalist, and novelist. Born and reared in Michigan, he attended three universities over the course of seven years but left before attaining a degree. After a stint in the Merchant Marine (he is still an able-bodied seaman), he started at \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e as a copyboy in 1958, soon becoming a staff writer and editor. He spent several years as a senior editor at William Morrow \u0026amp; Co. and returned to the \u003ci\u003ePost\u003c\/i\u003e, first as its daily book editor, then as founding editor of its independent book section, \u003ci\u003eBook World\u003c\/i\u003e. Later he moved to the newspaper’s editorial page, where he selected the letters to the editor and wrote a weekly op-ed column. After a two-year leave of absence, he left the newspaper in 1987 to write full time. His first novel, \u003ci\u003eTesting the Current\u003c\/i\u003e, was originally published in 1984. A second, \u003ci\u003eTo the Sargasso Sea\u003c\/i\u003e, published in 1987, took up the story of the first novel some thirty years later. In 1989 he went to Berlin as the Wall was coming down and ended up in Romania in early 1990, shortly after the fall of the Communist regime, intending to stay for three days. Instead, he spent most of the next six years there, writing about post-Communist Romania for \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGranta\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Wilson Quarterly\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eD. T. Max is a staff writer at \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery\u003c\/i\u003e, published in 2007, and \u003ci\u003eEvery Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace\u003c\/i\u003e, published in 2012.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305240088805,"sku":"NP9781590176023","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590176023.jpg?v=1767737921","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/testing-the-current-isbn-9781590176023","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}