Talk to Me
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
By the author of the New York Times bestseller, Love Poems for Married People, and the Thurber Prize-winner Truth in Advertising comes a wry yet tenderhearted look at how one man's public fall from grace leads him back to his family, and back to the man he used to be.
It's a story that Ted Grayson has reported time and time again in his job as a network TV anchor: the public downfall of those at the top. He just never imagined that it would happen to him. After his profanity-laced tirade is caught on camera, his reputation and career are destroyed, leaving him without a script for the first time in years.
While American viewers may have loved and trusted Ted for decades, his family certainly didn't: His years of constant travel and his big-screen persona have frayed all of his important relationships. At the time of his meltdown, Ted is estranged from his wife, Claire, and his adult daughter, Franny, a writer for a popular website. Franny views her father's disgrace with curiosity and perhaps a bit of smug satisfaction, but when her boss suggests that she confront Ted in an interview, she has to decide whether to use his loss as her career gain. And for Ted, this may be a chance to take a hard look at what got him to this place, and to try to find his way back before it's too late.
Talk to Me is a sharply observed, darkly funny, and ultimately warm story about a man who wakes up too late to the mess he's made of his life... and about our capacity for forgiveness and empathy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kenney's bittersweet, darkly funny latest (after Truth in Advertising) is equal parts family drama and commentary on communication and news consumption in the age of instant gratification. Fifty-nine-year-old New York anchorman Ted Grayson has been the beloved and ruggedly handsome face of the national evening news for 20 years. But a vicious epithet (which he immediately regrets) hurled at a young female hairstylist on a particularly bad day (and caught on video) proves to be his undoing. Additionally, Claire, his wife of 30 years, has fallen in love with someone else, and his daughter, Franny, won't speak to him. When the video leaks, the retribution is swift and brutal: he's skewered by the press, hounded by protesters, and eventually fired. When Franny, who writes for a sensationalist online rag and is thoroughly unsatisfied with her own life, asks him to do an interview, he accepts, but it has unintended consequences that force Franny to examine her own life and her fractured relationship with her father. Kenney is supremely gifted at creating flawed, vivid characters and capturing the wonder, ennui, and heartbreak of marriage and parenthood, and the seemingly small moments that make life precious. The conclusion, while satisfying, offers no easy solutions, but it does offer a healthy dose of hope. This is a fun, winning novel.
