Adam is a former musician and recovering alcoholic who is home for Thanksgiving for the first time in many years. Surrounded by his parents and siblings, nieces and nephews—all who have seen him at his worst—he can’t shake the feeling that no matter how hard he tries, he’ll always be the one who can’t get it right.
Marissa is a flight attendant whose marriage is strained by simmering tensions over race, class and ambition. Heading to her in-laws for their picture-perfect holiday family dinner, her anxiety is intensified by the knowledge she is pregnant from an impulsive one-night-stand.
In an airport restaurant on Thanksgiving morning, Adam and Marissa meet. Over the course of this day fraught with emotion and expectation, these two strangers will form an unlikely bond as they reckon with their family ties, their pasts, and the choices that will determine their way forward.
Joshua Max Feldman focuses his knowing eye on one of the last bastions of classical American idealism, the Thanksgiving family gathering, as he explores our struggles to know—and to be—our best selves. Hilarious and heartrending, Start Without Me is a thoughtful and entertaining page-turner that will leave its indelible mark on your heart.
About the Author :
Joshua Max Feldman is the author of The Book of Jonah. Born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, he has lived in England, Russia, and Switzerland, and currently resides in Brooklyn.
Review :
"Equal parts funny and searingly beautiful...well worth the ride." - New York Daily News
"When it comes to hitting rock bottom, Joshua Max Feldman is a deft recording angel. Both in his first novel, The Book of Jonah, and now again in Start Without Me, Feldman shines a loving and unsparing light on ordinary persons at the worst moments of their lives." - BookPage
"START WITHOUT ME is an exceptional novel. Following the Thanksgiving of two strangers who help each other through the catastrophic fall-out of their decisions, it's a tender, funny, beautifully written evocation of the maelstrom of the holidays and the potential to connect."
- Zachary Mason, author of Void Star and The Lost Books of the Odyssey"A darkly comic novel about two strangers who meet on Thanksgiving morning and end up on an odyssey that neither of them expects, Start Without Me is a smart, pitch-perfect story about how our families are made up of people who know us better than anyone--and yet somehow often don't know us at all." - #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline
"Pitch-perfect." - #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline
"Joshua Max Feldman has written the quintessential Thanksgiving novel. START WITHOUT ME has all the ingredients for an explosive holiday and a page-turning read: the turkey dinner hastily eaten, secrets and lies, and extra servings of love and dread with the possibility of redemption." - Marcy Dermansky, author of The Red Car
"A satisfying story about chance meetings and kinship." - Publishers Weekly
"Feldman's engaging novel offers sublime levity to balance the gravity of his characters' various struggles, and Adam's and Marissa's tales interweave effortlessly as they search for meaning among many doubts and what-ifs." - Booklist
"This compact, well-crafted novel, alternating between two points of view, asks the age-old question--how do you get from where you are to where you want to be?--but does so with indelible protagonists and a vision firmly anchored in the reality that surrounds them....Highly recommended for those interested in family dynamics, which means most of us.". - Library Journal
