Three Stages of Amazement
A Novel
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3.9 • 118 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times bestseller, a “furiously compelling” (New York Times) and richly compassionate novel about marriage, ambition, and reclaiming of love—by novelist and cofounder of the online fiction magazine Narrative.
Set in San Francisco, Three Stages of Amazement takes readers on a spellbinding journey across a landscape of national unease, when the fragility of one marriage reflects the tenuous state of the American Dream. Lena Rusch and her husband, Charlie Pepper, still believe they can have it all—sex, love, marriage, children, career, brilliance. But when life delivers surprises and tests, they must face, for the first time in their lives, real limitation.
Told with eloquence and compassion, Three Stages of Amazement is a true thriller of the heart—about confronting adversity, gaining wisdom, and finding great love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Edgarian's accomplished second novel (following Rise the Euphrates) looks at the way the privileged cope or fail to cope when the fates turn hard against them. Charlie Pepper gives up his surgical practice and moves his wife, Lena, and family to San Francisco to found Nimbus Surgical Devices, just in time for the 2008 market crash. While he scrambles to replace funding, Lena has her hands full with the household, a premature infant with multiple health issues, a young son, and her own family. They are already teetering on the edge when Charlie is offered funding from the one source Lena will object to: her uncle Cal, the man behind her father's failed business and, possibly, his death. Edgarian is in fine form, giving readers a well-told story with characters of great depth and complexity, but it is her crystalline writing and the unique narrative tone that elevates this the most.
Customer Reviews
Timely and Smart
Profoundly involving with an undercurrent of wisdom that had me reading sentences more than once to savor them. A party scene at the heart of the novel could give Mrs. Dalloway a run for her money. Beautifully conceived. highly recommended.
Three Stages of Boring
This novel is the obligatory quarterly call you try to avoid making to your former friend who has become an unabashed complaining housewife in the suburbs. I'll save my $12 and phone one of my sleep-deprived mother friends. The diction will be of nearly the same caliber and my interest level will steadily wane as it did with this novel.