The Minor Outsider
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Ed and Taylor, both aspiring young writers, fall in love during a summer of aimless drinking and partying in their university town of Missoula, Montana. Lonely and looking for love, they connect despite their profound differences: Ed is brooding, ambitious and self-destructive, living in denial of a mysterious tumour spreading from his limbs to his brain. Beautiful Taylor is positive, full of hope and emotional generosity, but like everyone, she has her limits. Their difficult relationship is intense, exciting yet doomed from the start, complicated further when Taylor falls pregnant. As Ed resists the harmony she brings to his life, Taylor's need to protect herself and their child also grows, until a dramatic finale.
Ted Mc Dermott's stark book speaks truthfully and with a touch of dark humor for and to today's generation of young people trying to find hope in what feels to many like an existential void. The Minor Outsider will be read as the young literary voice of our dark times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twenty-eight-year-old Ed has left his job as an editor in Chicago to pursue a master's degree in creative writing in picturesque Missoula, at the University of Montana. Also, Ed has a brain tumor, which he alternately obsesses over and ignores: "The tumor was like the millions of children starving in Africa: too alarming to think about." The connection between the tumor and the career decision seems clear but is not explicitly stated, which is part of the deadpan appeal of McDermott's darkly funny novel. McDermott's seemingly disaffected prose is not just a comic technique; it shrewdly reflects Ed's mental state, his coping mechanisms. "It was February and weirdly warm and it rained and he walked across the rectangle of pavement labeled Physicians Parking Lot." Ed falls hard for Taylor, a beautiful young classmate, and it's a particularly dysfunctional relationship. The couple drifts into cohabitation, with predictably awkward results. Might a change of scene brighten their relationship? One can plausibly see Ed's malaise as emblematic of the current age, or just relish McDermott's droll observations and unique prose. This is a surprising, smart, and memorable novel.
