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Title details for The Astral by Kate Christensen - Available

The Astral

by Kate Christensen
Donald Corren
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
The Astral is a huge rose-colored old pile of an apartment building in the gentrifying neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For decades it was the happy home (or so he thought) of poet Harry Quirk and his wife, Luz, a nurse, and of their two children: Karina, now a fervent Freegan, and Hector, now in the clutches of a cultish Christian community. But Luz has found (and destroyed) some poems of Harry's that ignite her long-simmering suspicions of infidelity, and he's been summarily kicked out. He now has to reckon with the consequences of his literary, marital, financial, and parental failures, (and perhaps others) and find his way forward - and back into Luz's good graces.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 14, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781666585377
      • File size: 280313 KB
      • Duration: 09:43:59

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This remarkable novel takes its name from a Brooklyn institution that sounds something like Manhattan's famous Chelsea Hotel, seedy home to a variety of colorful characters. These include Harry Quirk, a respected but basically failed poet, and his enraged and estranged wife, Luz, who is convinced, wrongly, that Harry is having an affair. Giving us a psychologically acute study of the death of love after a long-term marriage, Christensen succeeds impressively in inhabiting Harry's point of view. Donald Corren brings Christensen's large cast of characters, of which Brooklyn itself is one, to vivid, eccentric life. His version of Harry's freegan lesbian daughter, Karina, is effective; his messianic son, Hector, is a splendid creation; and his angry duet between Harry and his wife's therapist is hilarious. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 11, 2011
      Like the rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn of its setting, Christensen's unremittingly wonderful latest (after Trouble) is populated by an odd but captivating mix of characters. At the center is Harry Quirk, a middle-aged poet whose comfortable life is upended one winter day when his wife, Luz, convinced he's having an affair, destroys his notebooks, throws his laptop from the window, and kicks him out. Things, Harry has to admit, are not going well: their idealistic Dumpster-diving daughter, Karina, is lonely and lovelorn, and their son, Hector, is in the grip of a messianic cult. Taking in a much-changed Greenpoint, Brooklyn, while working at a lumberyard and hoping to recover his poetic spark, Harry must come to terms with the demands of starting anew at 57. Astute and unsentimental, at once romantic and wholly rational, Harry is an everyman adrift in a changing world, and as he surveys his failings, Christensen takes a singular, genuine story and blows it up into a smart inquiry into the nature of love and the commitments we make, the promises we do and do not honor, and the people we become as we negotiate the treacherous parameters of marriage and friendship and parenthood.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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