How Lucky
A Novel
-
-
4.2 • 138 Ratings
-
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
2022 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Novel
“A fantastic novel. . . . You are going to like this a lot.”—Stephen King
“What’s more thrilling than a fictional character speaking to us in a voice we haven’t heard before, a voice so authentic and immediate—think Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Mattie Ross—that we suspect it must’ve been there all along, that we somehow managed to miss it? Daniel, the protagonist of Will Leitch’s smart, funny, heartbreaking new novel How Lucky, is just such a voice, and I’m not sure it will ever completely leave my head, or that I want it to.”—Richard Russo
For readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Nothing to See Here, a first novel as suspenseful and funny as it is moving, the unforgettable story of a fiercely resilient young man living with a physical disability, and his efforts to solve a mystery unfolding right outside his door.
Daniel leads a rich life in the university town of Athens, Georgia. He’s got a couple close friends, a steady paycheck working for a regional airline, and of course, for a few glorious days each Fall, college football tailgates. He considers himself to be a mostly lucky guy—despite the fact that he’s suffered from a debilitating disease since he was a small child, one that has left him unable to speak or to move without a wheelchair.
Largely confined to his home, Daniel spends the hours he’s not online communicating with irate air travelers observing his neighborhood from his front porch. One young woman passes by so frequently that spotting her out the window has almost become part of his daily routine. Until the day he’s almost sure he sees her being kidnapped...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Deadspin founder Leitch (God Save the Fans) attempts to fuse a thriller onto a hopeful story of a man living with a degenerative disease, with surprisingly bland results. Daniel, 26, who uses a wheelchair and is unable to speak because of his spinal muscular atrophy, lives in the college town of Athens, Ga., where he works from home for a regional airline responding to tweets from angry customers and spends time with his perky Pakistani caretaker, Marjani, and stoner buddy Travis. One morning, he sees a young woman get into a tan Camaro outside his home. He later learns college student Ai-Chin has gone missing and believes he had witnessed Ai-Chin's abduction, then gets way in over his head trying to track down her abductor in a plot combining Daniel, Travis, and Marjani's Hardy Boys–style sleuthing with Daniel's obsessive, increasingly dangerous Reddit posts about Ai-Chin and the Camaro. The thriller plot is weakened by long digressions about the effects of Daniel's disease, frequent musings on subjects such as college football, and the implausibility that Daniel would blithely put himself in harm's way. The well-intentioned portrayal of what it means to live with a degenerative condition fails to compensate for the absence of convincing characters and plot. Readers can safely take a pass.
Customer Reviews
Read this in one day
I used to live in Athens, GA and I must say that the author’s descriptions of the place and ethos of its residents are fully and gently captured. I don’t know anyone with the disability of the protagonist, but it squares with others I have known who have had a profound disability. The ability to engage in life, sometimes to our peril, makes us human. We This was a page turner.
It’s great!
I love Daniel!! Thank you so much this lovely book!
What a Book!
You fall in love with the main character and his mini universe from the start. This fun, at times suspenseful, novel is an absolute blast.