About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherPenguin Canada

ISBN-100670069892

ISBN-139780670069897

eBay Product ID (ePID)215983648

Product Key Features

Book TitleRoad Narrows As You Go

Number of Pages512 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2014

TopicGeneral, Literary

GenreFiction

AuthorLee Henderson

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.5 in

Item Weight26.5 Oz

Item Length9.2 in

Item Width6.4 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

TitleLeadingThe

Reviews"Put Kavalier & Clay to one side, and Crumb, and Calvin & Hobbes . . . Henderson has contributed his own, outsized, rambunctious myth to the annals of comics, and of our literature." - Globe and Mail "With this novel, Lee Henderson gives us the 1980s, and so much more: creative spark, ambition, sex, and the darker pulls of history, time, and death. Henderson is inventive, playful, and deeply serious, and this ambitious novel includes all his gifts." - Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings "Lee Henderson fashions a boisterous, romantically dirty, and cannibalistic universe in which one of the great American art forms (the newspaper comic strip) and one of the most controversial American presidents (Ronald Reagan) are swirled together to create a brand new Peter Pan story about capitalism, art, selling out, and the darkness of growing up. It's a wild, surprising, and heartbreaking adventure." - Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?

Synopsis All Wendy Ashbubble has ever wanted is to draw comics as well as Charles Schultz's Peanuts --and to one day see her creations grace the pages of a major daily newspaper. Growing up in Victoria in the 1970s, Wendy dreams of getting out, getting away ... and getting recognition for her talent. And there's another, never-whispered motivation that prompts her to seek her fortune: a deeply buried memory and unshakeable belief that her unknown father is Ronald Reagan, the fortieth president of the United States. A chance meeting in Victoria with an attractive-but-mysterious travelling artist inspires Wendy to take the plunge, and she runs away to live in a dilapidated artists' commune in San Francisco. There, amid the haze of top-quality weed, unbridled creativity, and unfettered sex, her dream begins to take tangible shape. With the aid of Frank Fleecen, an up-and-coming bonds trader and agent, Wendy's Strays are soon competing for newsprint space against the likes of Berkeley Breathed, Jim Davis, and Bill Watterston ... even against Wendy's beloved Charles Schultz himself. But there are darker shades on the pencilled horizon: the spectre of AIDS, unexplained disappearances, bad therapy, junk bonds, demonology, and SEC agents investigating Frank's business protocols. The Road Narrows As You Go is simultaneously the portrait of a young woman struggling to find her place and a bright, rollicking, unflinching depiction of the 1980s. It embodies all the brash optimism and ruthless amoralism of the decade, as well as its preoccupation with repressed memories, and fully captures the flavour of an uncertain but deeply vibrant era., All Wendy Ashbubble has ever wanted is to draw comics as well as Charles Schultz s "Peanuts" and to one day see her creations grace the pages of a major daily newspaper. Growing up in Victoria in the 1970s, Wendy dreams of getting out, getting away and getting recognition for her talent. And there s another, never-whispered motivation that prompts her to seek her fortune: a deeply buried memory and unshakeable belief that her unknown father is Ronald Reagan, the fortieth president of the United States. A chance meeting in Victoria with an attractive-but-mysterious travelling artist inspires Wendy to take the plunge, and she runs away to live in a dilapidated artists commune in San Francisco. There, amid the haze of top-quality weed, unbridled creativity, and unfettered sex, her dream begins to take tangible shape. With the aid of Frank Fleecen, an up-and-coming bonds trader and agent, Wendy s "Strays "are soon competing for newsprint space against the likes of Berkeley Breathed, Jim Davis, and Bill Watterston even against Wendy s beloved Charles Schultz himself. But there are darker shades on the pencilled horizon: the spectre of AIDS, unexplained disappearances, bad therapy, junk bonds, demonology, and SEC agents investigating Frank s business protocols. " The Road Narrows As You Go " is simultaneously the portrait of a young woman struggling to find her place and a bright, rollicking, unflinching depiction of the 1980s. It embodies all the brash optimism and ruthless amoralism of the decade, as well as its preoccupation with repressed memories, and fully captures the flavour of an uncertain but deeply vibrant era. "

LC Classification NumberPR9199.4.H46R63 2014