Reviews
Advance Praise for The Astral : "Like the rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn of its setting, Christensen's unremittingly wonderful latest (after Trouble) is populated by an odd but captivating mix of characters. At the center is Harry Quirk, a middle-aged poet whose comfortable life is upended one winter day when his wife, Luz, convinced he's having an affair, destroys his notebooks, throws his laptop from the window, and kicks him out. Things, Harry has to admit, are not going well: their idealistic Dumpster-diving daughter, Karina, is lonely and lovelorn, and their son, Hector, is in the grip of a messianic cult. Taking in a much-changed Greenpoint, Brooklyn, while working at a lumberyard and hoping to recover his poetic spark, Harry must come to terms with the demands of starting anew at 57. Astute and unsentimental, at once romantic and wholly rational, Harry is an everyman adrift in a changing world, and as he surveys his failings, Christensen takes a singular, genuine story and blows it up into a smart inquiry into the nature of love and the commitments we make, the promises we do and do not honor, and the people we become as we negotiate the treacherous parameters of marriage and friendship and parenthood ."- Publishers Weekly (starred) Praise for Kate Christensen: "Christensen is the kind of writer who's willing to say things most people don't dare to. And she knows exactly how to say them." - Time "[Her] characters are marvelously realized, and when Christensen's on a roll, her wit is irresistible." - Publishers Weekly "Christensen's writing is clear-eyed, bitingly funny, and supremely caustic about the niceties of social relations, contemporary American culture, and sexual politics." - O, The Oprah Magazine "Nimble, witty, and discerning, Kate Christensen is single-handedly reinvigorating the comedy of manners with her smart and disemboweling novels of misanthropes, cultural and aesthetic divides, private angst, social ambition, and appetites run amok." -Chicago Tribune "Kate Christensen is a serious writer: Don't be fooled by the relentless hipness or what seems full-throttle frivolity of her subject matter-the joke, if you don't get it, is on you." - New York Observer "Kate Christensen's brilliant, big-hearted skewering of greatness, of men . . . reminded me that books can be witty, and heartbreaking, and intelligent, and keep you up too late reading. How rare it is that a writer is talented enough to deliver such varied treasures in one novel, but Christensen manages it effortlessly." -Heidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment, Praise for Kate Christensen: "Christensen is the kind of writer who's willing to say things most people don't dare to. And she knows exactly how to say them." - Time "[Her] characters are marvelously realized, and when Christensen's on a roll, her wit is irresistible." - Publishers Weekly "Christensen's writing is clear-eyed, bitingly funny, and supremely caustic about the niceties of social relations, contemporary American culture, and sexual politics." - O, The Oprah Magazine "Nimble, witty, and discerning, Kate Christensen is single-handedly reinvigorating the comedy of manners with her smart and disemboweling novels of misanthropes, cultural and aesthetic divides, private angst, social ambition, and appetites run amok." -Chicago Tribune "Kate Christensen is a serious writer: Don't be fooled by the relentless hipness or what seems full-throttle frivolity of her subject matter-the joke, if you don't get it, is on you." - New York Observer "Kate Christensen's brilliant, big-hearted skewering of greatness, of men . . . reminded me that books can be witty, and heartbreaking, and intelligent, and keep you up too late reading. How rare it is that a writer is talented enough to deliver such varied treasures in one novel, but Christensen manages it effortlessly." -Heidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment
