Life Among Giants

“Consistently surprising and truly entertaining ... Part thriller, part family drama, Life Among Giants is deliciously strange and deeply affecting.” -The Boston Globe

This funny, exuberant novel captures the reader with the grand sweep of seven-foot-tall David “Lizard” Hochmeyer’s larger-than-life quest to unravel the mystery surrounding his parents’ deaths. It’s a journey laden with pro football stars, a master chef and his beautiful transvestite lover, a world-famous ballerina and her English rocker husband, and a sister who’s as brilliant as she is unstable. A wildly entertaining, plot-twisting novel of murder, seduction, and revenge — rich in incident, expansive in character, and lavish in setting — Life Among Giants is an exhilarating adventure.

“Hilarious and heartbreaking, wild and wise, Bill Roorbach’s Life Among Giants, which is earning comparisons to The World According to Garp, is a vivid chronicle of a life lived large.” -Parade

“A larger-than-life production. Yet all of its wild characters feel genuine, their aches and flaws and desires wholly organic; and the plot they’re tangled in moves forward at a breakneck pace. It’s a dizzy romp ... Which isn’t to say there isn’t real meat here. Roorbach doesn’t let the novel’s rich entertainment stand in the way of emotional subtlety.” -The New York Times Book Review

“A bighearted, big-boned story ... Life Among Giants reads like something written by a kinder, gentler John Irving ... Roorbach is a humane and entertaining storyteller with a smooth, graceful style.” -The Washington Post

“A bravura performance.” -Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls

“Bill Roorbach is a writer with enormous vision and an even more enormous heart.” -Ann Hood, author of The Red Thread