Greetings from Asbury Park
by Daniel H. Turtel
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Pub Date Apr 05 2022 | Archive Date May 04 2022
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Description
Winner of the Faulkner Society Award for Best Novel
"Phenomenal."--Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“A remarkable debut from a talented writer.”--Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Election and Little Children
In a small seaside city on the Jersey Shore, three half-siblings confront the death of a distant and bullying patriarch. They now have the chance to imagine new relationships and new futures, ones that would have been near-unthinkable while their father was alive.
Caught in their crossfire are the conservative religious communities that border Asbury Park, the longtime locals who have been pushed to the fringe by the shore’s revitalization, and the legendary town upon which the whole world seems to converge. Slowly, however, they come to understand that everything—their future, their happiness—depends on whether they can face themselves.
Wise, perceptive, and provocative, Greetings from Asbury Park is a remarkable literary debut in the tradition of great American novels such as Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. It is a deep interrogation of place that depicts flawed characters as they break through to adulthood, truth, and to a moral relationship with the world.
Advance Praise
“Greetings from Asbury Park is phenomenal… to summon the Shore - and Asbury Park, no less - in all its delirious breathtaking bull-headed complexity requires an artist of the first order and Turtel is such an artist. Greetings from Asbury Park is a novel to be cherished, a blazing summer for the heart and the mind.”
- Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“It takes some audacity to name your name book after a classic album, but Daniel Turtel earns the right. Greeting from Asbury Park is a remarkable debut from a talented writer—ambitious, moving, full of complicated, thorny characters, and enough Jersey Shore ambiance that you can almost smell the boardwalk.”
-Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Election and Little Children
"A masterful, poetic blend of realism and storytelling. Turtel is the real deal--a verbal warrior who's already begun writing the next chapters in the saga of masculinity's struggle with itself."
-Austin Ratner, award-winning author of The Jump and In the Land of the Living
“Compact, stylish, and deeply felt, Greetings from Asbury Park examines relationships with precision, clarity and warmth, honoring the richness of both darkness and light, both fleeting moments and entire lives. A tremendous debut. “
-Rebecca Kauffman, author of The Gunners and Another Place You’ve Never Been
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Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781799956761 |
| PRICE | $25.99 (USD) |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Lee C, Reviewer
This is a wonderful novel.
"Greetings from Asbury Park" follows the interconnected lives of several residents of Asbury Park, a New Jersey seaside city with tourists, summer residents, and permanent residents. The main characters are Davey Larkin, the son of the late Joseph Larkin; his half-brother Casey Larkin, whose mother was Joseph’s mistress; and their half-sister Gabriella Walker, whose mother was a housecleaner for Joseph.
The author provides a series of vignettes, moving among these characters and a half-dozen others, that are meticulously crafted and carefully woven together to create the narrative.
Most of the characters are ones that are occasionally quite distasteful or worse, yet I can see myself in each of them, too.
If you are looking for an action-adventure plot, this is not for you; but if you enjoy fine writing and character exposition, you will love this book.
Jennie B, Reviewer
Set amongst a seaside town, the lives of several characters are described almost lyrically in an ode to the heavy love of jazz held by the dead patriarch of the story who has fathered three children, one by his wife and the legitimate heir to his property, financial comfort, etc., and two illegitimate children mothered by mistresses.
The story is complicated in the sense that within a few intersecting areas of quarters, the characters are all intertwined as well. The author does not shy from scandal from allowing rumors to spread between the locals and bringing issues of class, race, and sexual orientation to the main stage.
The book itself is not terribly long, and I was left wanting more background and insight to the characters. The ending left me with an ache in my chest but served as an appropriate ending to a story full of characters that were merely improvising their way through life.
All around a wonderful debut and I look forward to reading more from this author.
**DRC provided by NetGalley
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