- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: WW Norton; Reprint edition (May 31 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393321711
- ISBN-13: 978-0393321715
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 14 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Featuring a New York that, like Kundera's Prague, is a vast hive of seductions and betrayals, Beller's carefully crafted debut novel charts the coming-of-age of Alex Fader, already familiar from Beller's short story collection, Seduction Theory. Fader grows up "in an apartment on the 14th floor of a large prewar building that took up an entire block of Riverside Drive." His father, a psychoanalyst, dies when Alex is 10; his mother, a dancer, discovers in herself a talent for scholarship and eventually writes a large, authoritative tome on the moral origins of WWI. Alex himself, cousin to the characters in Rick Moody's novels, has a very '70s adolescence; while Moody's characters get their high school kicks in the post-Cheever suburbs, however, Alex is buying Thai sticks from a dealer in the Village and attending numerous extravagant bar mitzvah parties. Curious and keenly observant, he frequently sleeps over at his friends' apartments and perceives various patterns of family relationships. As he moves out of adolescence, Alex discovers his sensual nature. With his mother's image as archetype, he dates a series of successful, competent, beautiful women. Finally, he meets Katrina, an upper-class Londoner with a young son, who succumbs to his charm against her better judgment. Alex invariably adopts a boyish stance in his relationships, alternating between adoration and cruelty, but his conscience gives him trouble on another score. He and his cousin Karl have moved their Alzheimer's-afflicted Aunti B to an old folks' home in Pennsylvania, and Alex guiltily takes over her empty apartment. Always acutely conscious of his environment, he is uneasy living in a place redolent of his childhood, one that is not "clean of history." The narrative moves through Alex's 20s, and ends, symmetrically, with Alex, now a filmmaker, back in the Riverside Drive apartment, lunching with his mother. Beller has the true novelist's knack for weaving together the disparate threads of postmodern urban existence into convincing studies of character. The vignettes of Alex's life coalesce into a moving portrait of a young man intuitively seeking a place he can call home. (June) FYI: Beller is a founding editor of Open City magazine.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Beller's stories trace the life of Alex Fader, New Yorker, from age six to age 30 or so. The title is apt, for Alex never seems quite at home anywhere but is always an outsider, crashing other people's homes and lives. In "Harmonie Club," he almost carries off his charade of being a member of the exclusive club to which his best friend's father belongs. He drifts in and out of relationships. The longest story, "Seconds of Pleasure," finds him in London, where he has gone on a whim after losing his job. There he meets glamorous Katrina, a soon-to-be-divorced mother, and begins a complicated long-distance affair. The "sleep-over" theme is most fully realized here, where Alex is casting about for a place in the center of Katrina's life, competing with both husband and son. Her substantial London house, another place where Alex is a visitor but never really belongs, is described in considerable detail. Each of the stories stands alone, but it's their cumulative effect that lends the collection weight. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
ALEX FADER GREW UP IN AN APARTMENT ON THE FOURTEENTH floor of a large prewar building that took up an entire block of Riverside Drive. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
ALEX FADER GREW UP IN AN APARTMENT ON THE FOURTEENTH floor of a large prewar building that took up an entire block of Riverside Drive. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not as racy as you think...,
By JR Pinto (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sleep Over Artist Fiction (Paperback)
Thomas Beller's The Sleep-Over Artist is a novel-in-short-stories, all centered on the character of Alex Fader. Alex is a Jewish kid who lives on Riverside Drive in Manhattan, and has the childhood experiences unique to natives of that island. We first meet Alex in the seventies when he is six years old and we follow him to his early twenties. There is no real story to the novel - it is merely a collection of episodes forming a sort of Bildungsroman. To say the least, Alex is a morally ambivalent character and he is not always likeable. The book's title and its blurbs lead one to believe that it is more risqué than it actually is. Yet it is well-written and provides a good look into the life of a young, educated, Manhattanite.
2.0 out of 5 stars
not bad, but not great either,
By
This review is from: Sleep Over Artist Fiction (Hardcover)
While at times engaging, this coming-of-age tale ultimately didn't bring anything new to the genre. I was never so bored that I put it down, but nor did I find any of the characters particularly engaging... they seem to float through life, never connecting with anyone, including the reader. There were points where the narrative jumped sideways in a jarring way, especially towards the end, that were too abrupt, unexplained, and made the book unsatisfying. Good material, but needs a good editor!
5.0 out of 5 stars
the best things in life are free,
By
This review is from: Sleep Over Artist Fiction (Paperback)
I found this book in a box labeled "Free" on a college campus, and I was intrigued by the collection of little stories about a guy named Alex Fader who grows up in Manhattan. He starts out as a lost boy and becomes a lost man. But he's not so terribly selfish, just very confused about human relationships, compounded by the fact that his father died of cancer while he was very young and then raised by a single mother. There are some disturbing misogynistic moments which seem centered around women's breasts -- like the poor classmate Tania whose top is ripped off at a bar mitzvah, no less. But there are also some touching moments when he loses the woman he truly loves because she feels a need, on her 35th birthday, to finally move from New York -- a move that will not include Alex. I am sure many people can identify with Christine's need to go somewhere new, with Alex's heartbreak at being left behind. It is not the greatest book ever written, but it is still a good book. It reminds me of Harry, the main character in Adam Davies' "The Frog King". Just everything you suspected about twentysomething guys put into writing, for better or worse.
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