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Model Home: A Novel (Paperback)

Model Home: A Novel By Eric Puchner Cover Image
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Description


From the author of the Oprah Book Club Pick Dream State, a debut novel that is a wildly funny, heartbreaking, and thoroughly original portrait of an American family.

Warren Ziller moved his family to Southern California in search of a charmed life, and to all appearances, he found it: a gated community not far from the beach, amid the affluent splendor of the 1980s. But the Zillers’ American dream is about to be rudely interrupted. Warren has squandered their savings on a bad real estate investment, which he conceals from his wife, Camille, who misreads his secrecy as a sign of an affair. Their children, Dustin, Lyle, and Jonas, have grown as distant as satellites, too busy with their own betrayals and rebellions to notice their parents’ distress. When tragedy strikes, the Zillers are forced to move to Warren’s abandoned housing development in the desert. In this comically bleak new home, each must reckon with what’s led them there and who’s to blame—and whether they can summon the forgiveness needed to hold the family together.

\With penetrating insights into modern life and an uncanny eye for everyday absurdities, Eric Puchner delivers a brilliant first novel.

About the Author


Eric Puchner is the author of the story collection Music Through the Floor, a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award; the novel Model Home, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction; a second short story collection, Last Day on Earth; and a second novel, Dream State, an Oprah Book Club Pick. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in GQ, Granta, Tin House, Best American Short Stories, and more. He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.

 

 

 

Praise For…


“The only conclusion to come to after reading this novel is that Eric Puchner is a massive talent…Each character is perfectly drawn and deeply interesting. Go read this book.” --McSweeney’s

“Puchner’s well-constructed tale of a house of pain built on a foundation of secrets echoes Updike and Easton Ellis.” --People magazine, 4 stars

“Puchner is an extraordinarily talented writer... a master of mood and tone, able to make moments of pure hilarity follow heartbreak with the seamlessness of real life.”

--Boston Globe


Product Details
ISBN: 9780743270496
ISBN-10: 0743270495
Publisher: Scribner
Publication Date: September 14th, 2010
Pages: 384
Language: English