Beautiful Children (Hardcover)

Bock's debut novel is among the most acclaimed of 2008, which makes it surprising that its audio version would appear in a truncated, abridged version. Even in the shortened version, Mark Deakins's reading is mostly solid. Deakins's subdued baritone is deeply soothing, which makes the book perhaps more relaxing than Bock might have intended his jarring portrait of Las Vegas's shattered youth to be. The only real miscalculation in Deakins's reading is when he attempts the voices of Bock's hip-hop–wannabe teenagers. The effect is more ludicrous than accurate and makes for a harsh interruption to his otherwise fluid reading. On second thought, perhaps that does fulfill the book's intent to occasionally shock.
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Ravishing and raw... What should be said of the results of his labors? One word: bravo" and, as corruptly compelling as Vegas, and as beautiful as the illusions its characters cling to for survival -- New York Times Book Review Has great energy and some lovely writing. Bears comparison to Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections or Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe novels. It shares with these books the sharp eye for the minutiae of domestic arrangements, the excess of detail mirroring the way consumer materialism shapes the interpersonal transactions of the middle-class American home, and a sense of elegy for how the promise of the American Dream more often than not (at least in literature) seems to get lost. -- Sydney Morning Herald 'It's wholly original - dirty, fast and hypnotic. The sentences flicker and skip and whirl, like the neon city Bock writes about. It will change the way you look at Las Vegas' -- Esquire Magazine (US) 'Rich and compelling' -- LA Times The brilliant sentence-on-sentence prose gives the book its power an impressive novel -- The London Paper 'Beautiful Children careens from the seedy to the beautiful, the domestic to the epic, all with huge and exacting heart.' -- Jonathan Safran Foer 'It is stunning, near genius. Beautiful Children is brutal, erotic and like a wild potentially dangerous ride--it could crash at any moment. The language has a rhythm wholly it's own--a nervous kind of be-bob. It is as though Bock saved up everything for this moment--a major new talent.' -- A. M. Homes 'Beautiful Children is a fucking mind-blower! It is so good practically every sentence shines. You've got a sensation on your hands.' -- Sean Wilsey, author of Oh The Glory Of It All 'Beautiful Children is one of the finest first novels I have ever read. Brilliant, simmering, erotic, this dark adventure takes the world apart and offers it to you, piece by heart-stopping piece.' -- Allison Smith, author of Name all the Animals 'Charles Bock takes us somewhere in Beautiful Children that most of us would be afraid to go alone: across the neon deserts of the new west and into an underworld that is the world. Follow him. This is a journey, and a novel, that allows us no turning back.' -- Walter Kirn, author of Thumbsucker and Up In The Air 'His ability to share a deep understanding of America ... gives the book a whiff of greatness' -- Washington Post 'A distinctive debuta painfully well-observed account of loss both loss of innocence and physical loss' -- Independent 'Bocks debut shows potential' -- Observer/Review 'Charles Bock's ambitious, witty and immensely affecting debut novel ... Beautiful Children proves to be a real winner, one created out of nailing the mecca for all losers.' -- Independent on Sunday 'The inside glimpse at husband and wife struggling to keep their marriage together is particularly poignant' -- Image 'Bock combines a sharp and wry humour with a persuasive critique of the hypocrisy inherent within American capitalism leaves you hankering for more of what this touching and funny writer might have to offer' -- Metro (London and Scotland) 'tragedy and redemption amidst the gaudy glitter of Las Vegas' -- Waterstones Books Quarterly '(A) tragic and suspenseful story' -- Dazed and Confused 'Wonderfully drawn characters, breathtaking dialogue and a plot that, at its heart, is downright noir' -- Financial Times 'Magnificent ... The surface of Beautiful Children is as multifaceted and glittering as a disco ball, but underneath is an utterly convincing vision of the quicksand of corruption: how quickly a person can sink into it, and how difficult it is to pull yourself out... Bock animates the flamboyant structure of his novel with a dark, pulsating heart, juggling with admirable facility the contrapuntal voices and stories of more than half a dozen major characters. With its famous facsimiles of New York and Egypt and Polynesia, Las Vegas may be a giant deception in the desert, but Charles Bock is the real thing.' -- New Republic