The Development: A Novel [Hardcover]

From the iconic Barth come nine darkly comic stories set in a gated community on Maryland's Eastern Shore. In his trademark style—multiple endings, metaphysical musings, breaking the fourth wall—Barth presents a searing indictment of a certain sociological class in the later stages of life, when the worries of advancing age beset characters who are dealing with or anticipating infirmities, burdensome caregiving and wrenching losses. Barth's antic eye for character is undiminished; he fleshes out a spectrum of men and women who run the gamut of professions, political beliefs and financial status, and whose relationships include unwavering marital love, random flirting and adultery. The current(ish) events simmering in the background (the Bush administration's follies, Uganda and Darfur, and several hurricanes) ground the narrative and put the stories into a broader context outside the community's gates. Urbane, discursive and humorous, often bawdy and never sentimental, these stories would be an accessible way for new readers to discover Barth, and his fans, of course, will eat this up. (Oct.)
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"[Barth] plies, as he has from the very start of his career, a gratifyingly well-textured prose." (New York Times )

"Disturbing, but humorous...Reading The Development is a worthy investment in lofty literary real estate." (Seattle Times )

"Barth is at his best when he plays it straight, allowing narratives and characters to develop, their fundamental humanity to be revealed." (Victoria Times-Colonist ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From one of our most celebrated masters, a touching, comic, deeply humane collection of linked stories about surprising developments in a gated community "I find myself inclined to set down for whomever, before my memory goes kaput altogether, some account of our little community, in particular of what Margie and I consider to have been its most interesting hour: the summer of the Peeping Tom." Something has disturbed the comfortably retired denizens of a pristine Florida-style gated community in Chesapeake Bay country. In the dawn of the new millennium and the evening of their lives, these empty nesters discover that their tidy enclave can be as colorful, shocking, and surreal as any of John Barth's fictional locales. From the high jinks of a toga party to marital infidelities, a baffling suicide pact, and the sudden, apocalyptic destruction of the short-lived development, Barth brings mordant humor and compassion to the lives of characters we all know well. From "one of the most prodigally gifted comic novelists writing in English today" (Newsweek), The Development is John Barth at his most accessibleand sympathetic best.

JOHN BARTH's fiction has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, and the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. For many years he taught in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of such seminal works as The Sot-Weed Factor, Chimera (for which he won the National Book Award), and Giles Goat-Boy. "Toga Party," an excerpt from The Development, appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2007, edited by Stephen King. He lives in Chestertown, Maryland, and Bonita Springs, Florida.