A Calling for Charlie Barnes

Charlie Barnes, sixty-eight years old, reasonable man, small-business owner is facing the abyss and it's time to reckon with how he has lived his life so far. What happened to all those great ideas that were snatched from the jaws of success? And what was with all those unsuccessful marriages? Well, who's counting the wives when Barbara, his fifth and most permanent wife, is such a rock solid pillar of society? Maybe Jake Barnes, son of Charlie and writer of his story is counting. Now that his father seems to be on the way out, Jake begins to wonder what Charlie Barnes's desperate dreams of success have really added up to. If his father's life was a series of fantasies, then how is it possible for his son to tell the truth about him? And will Jake have to confront the fact that in their ambitions, and their delusions, they might not actually be so very different? Joshua Ferris's new novel is both a profoundly tender and brutally funny portrayal of a life lost in the American dream.

About the Author :
Joshua Ferris was born in Illinois in 1974. He is the author of four novels and one collection of short stories. His debut, Then We Came to the End, won the PEN/Hemingway award and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and his most recent novel, To Rise Again at A Decent Hour, was nominated for the Booker Prize and won the Dylan Thomas Prize. He lives in upstate New York.

Review :
A hilarious skewering of the American Dream by the man who must be the funniest writer we have This is a fine American novel about family, love, and a decent but flawed man trying to be better. In dark times like these, I can't recommend this book too highly Splendid . . . it is hard to be genuinely funny in a novel but the final 50 or so pages, in which Charlie's family confront Jake Barnes, the fourth wall-breaking narrator of the novel, over the content of the tell-all memoir, was easily the most hilarious chapter of a novel I read all year Until I read A Calling For Charlie Barnes, Joshua Ferris's virtuosic third novel, I couldn't recall the last time a book caused me to both laugh and gasp aloud. Madly funny and bristling with intelligence, this is the story of a man in later life wallowing in the detritus of the American Dream and of the children witnessing his decline Simultaneously narratively courageous and utterly hilarious . . . where it leaves the reader feels special and unique In Ferris's admirably risk-taking hands, this novel becomes so much more than simply another story of failed American dreams. Ferris has made himself into the leading writer of the American workplace . . . He understands both its absurdities (and this is another very funny book) and its rewards, but most of all he understands how it shapes modern America Ferris could write enthralling realist fiction in his sleep but it's the ideas and formal ingenuity that really set this novel apart . . . [he considers] the role of storytelling in families, the myths we create and the possibility that there is no such thing as telling it straight Brilliant, funny, heartbreaking . . . Family, memory, ambition and death, all told with dervishing glee. Not just a daredevil of a novel, but something truly new Ferris is on his finest deadpan form here, skewering contemporary America and the shallow values it embodied in the heat of the 2008 financial crash Inventive and witty, tender and wise. It's a portrait of life, love and death, and much else besides This is the story of one disappointed idealist told by another, of one unreliable narrator described by another, and it is animated by filial love . . . funny, moving - and surprising This novel is funny - Ferris has lovely comic timing and a great way with the sheer silliness of a family's mental and physical bric-a-brac - and very moving Dazzling . . . A more tender novel than Ferris's others, but that doesn't keep it from being murderously funny . . . [he has found] precisely the right way to meld memoir with satire, to do this with bracing originality and to keep heads spinning from this novel's first page to its last . . . he's risen to the top of his game Funny, moving, and formally a work of genius, A Calling for Charlie Barnes is quite literally the book Joshua Ferris was born to write. Dazzling. Mind-blowing. About as much fun as you can have without risking arrest A deeply funny, very moving book . . . Ferris's hijinks are serious; his play is profound. There is magic in these pages A touching tale about the love between fathers and sons A passionate, well-constructed, often hilarious and, at times, profound plunge into grief, both civic and intimate, as well as a culmination (so far) of the literary explorations he has been undertaking since he arrived A Calling for Charlie Barnes is wonderful: fast and deep, urgent and brilliant . . . A hilarious, intimate, and scathing takedown of so many American vanities He has proved that he's one of the best American authors of comic fiction working today. His humour is on full display but so are his intelligence and compassion. It's a masterpiece that shines a revealing light on both family and fiction itself Ferris's work cuts to the heart of who we are by focusing very painfully on who one man was . . . Consider this book not just a work of grief or love or memoir, then, but a work of hope, too. A warmly bullish but measured and reflectful voice that brings out all the humour and wisdom of the novel Intriguing and intelligent . . . the humour throughout is exquisitely judged . . . and the descent into metafiction, the novel's true crowning glory, is extremely well done without ever feeling hammy or clunky A relentlessly self-reflective book Joshua Ferris has proved his astonishing ability to spin gold from ordinary air . . . As brave and adept as any writer out there Not too many authors have written the Great American Office Novel... Then We Came to the End feels like a readymade classic of the genre. . . . A truly affecting novel about work, trust, love, and loneliness Dismayingly funny in the way that only really serious books can be Brilliant, funny, stomach-turningly accurate Very funny, intense and exhilarating