Early Sobrieties
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
'Suberb . . . vivid' TELEGRAPH
'The arrival of a writer of considerable gifts' TLS
'Michael Deagler is the real deal . . . a truly intelligent work from a clearly intelligent writer' PERCIVAL EVERETT
'Illuminating and moving' AIMEE BENDER
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Dennis Monk is about to spend his first summer sober. At twenty-six he is ready to re-join sensible adult life, but just when Dennis needs stability, his uptight parents kick him out into a world of couch-surfing.
Everything around him has changed and everyone he knows seems to be doing better than he is. At every street corner, former classmates, estranged drinking buddies, and prospective lovers threaten to burst the bubble of his recovery. And Dennis Monk is about to learn the difference between getting sober and staying sober in this new world.
Early Sobrieties is a devastatingly witty novel about coming of age a second time. Deagler’s debut marks the arrival of an astonishing new voice in American fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young man surfaces from the depths of alcoholism in Deagler's pitch-perfect debut novel. Dennis Monk, 26, is seven months sober and determined to reconnect with the community he left behind in Bucks County, Pa., where he grew up before moving to Philadelphia for college. His Irish Catholic parents are skeptical, though, and they kick him out of the house after he fails to find gainful employment. Thus ensues a winding trek across Philly, whose blocks remain awash in Dennis's memories even as the pace of gentrification picks up. Between bed-hopping among new and old flames, he reconnects with friends he'd grown estranged from and takes on odd jobs for which he's semiqualified (after helping a new homeowner remove unsightly shag carpeting, he falsely identifies the uncovered flooring as solid oak). Dennis's years of drinking and working in dive bars and his blue-collar background anoint him with a wizened and wry outlook on the rapidly transforming city (one neighborhood is "quickly becoming another charm in Philadelphia's hipster bracelet," invaded by "the sons of lawyers and pediatricians who aspired to look like the sons of miners and farmers"). Deagler is even better when Dennis looks inward, weighing his precarious liberation from booze ("A substance so wholesome they served it in church"). This is a standout.
