Schroder

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Attending summer camp as a boy, Erik Schroder-- a first generation East German immigrant--adopts the name of Eric Kennedy, a decision that will set him on an improbable and transformative journey. SCHRODER relates the story of how years later, Erik finds himself on an urgent escape to Lake Champlain, Vermont with his daughter, hiding from authorities amidst a heated custody battle with estranged wife, Laura, who is unaware of his previous identity. From a correctional facility, Erik surveys the course of his life: his love for Laura, his childhood, his experience as a father. In this way, this sweeping and deftly-imagined novel is an exploration of the identities we take on in our lives-those we are born with, and those we construct for ourselves.

Reviews

"...a fascinating psychological portrait of love, longing and self-loathing....Written as a jailhouse confession to his ex-wife, SCHRODER's closest literary relative is probably Lolita (minus the pedophilia): The compellingly unreliable narrator of European background, the East Coast road trip with the precocious child, the narcissism, the unsavory motels, the whiff of danger. SCHRODER easily stands up to the comparison....And yet the book, at its heart, is a love story. Schroder may be deluded-and a woefully irresponsible parent-but his touching, sincere adoration of his daughter and ex-wife is his great redemption."--The Los Angeles Times
"SCHRODER is a beautifully told story about how a father's undeniable love for his young child can be distorted by the pressure he experiences at the thought of being cut off from her.... we all are destined to fall short of our expectations, to fail to match our lovingly painted self-portraits, some of us more dramatically and tragically than others. It's but one of many penetrating insights that transport Amity Gaige's novel from the realm of mere artifice to the status of real art."--Book Reporter
"[A] superb novel....Gaige makes fraudulent, kidnapping Eric utterly sympathetic-heartbreakingly so-which is part of this book's intelligence and depth. We have so little distance from him that we become myopic in our desire to have his outrageous escapade work, even though we know it cannot."--San Francisco Chronicle
"A lyrical and poetic novel about the adverse ramifications of a little white lie that follows its teller throughout his life."--O, The Oprah Magazine
"Agile. . . transporting . . . a book that works as both character study and morality play, filled with questions that have no easy answers."--Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Amity Gaige has written a flawless book. It does not contain a single false note. Playful and inventive, SCHRODER movingly depicts the ways we confound our own hearts--how even with the best intentions, we fail to love those closest to us as well as we wish we could. Eric Schroder should take his place among the most charismatic and memorable characters in contemporary fiction, and Amity Gaige her place among the most talented and impressive writers working today."
--David Bezmozgis, prize-winning author of Natasha and Other Stories and The Free World
"Amity Gaige's SCHRODER is a triumph of voice. Part road trip escapade, part liar's lament, this absorbing, expertly crafted book takes the form of a self-serving but moving apologia written in an Albany jail cell by an untrustworthy but genuinely heartbroken father and ex-husband with astonishingly bad judgment....one heartrending lesson from all these narratives is that even a deeply flawed parent can be a loving one."--Barnes & Noble Review
"Brilliantly written....What could be a hackneyed novelistic trope--the confessional letter--is completely transformed in Gaige's sure and insightful hands....SCHRODER is a haunting look at the extreme desire for love and family, and how the mind can justify that need to possess what it cannot have. Almost, just almost, Schroder has us rooting for him."--Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Complicated and nuanced . . . the novel is absorbing, with a propulsive plot and a narrator who is charming, ambivalent, and searching-a man driven by love who understands that love cannot save him."--The New Yorker
"Daring...a clean, suspenseful, economical story that is also a clever act of social commentary...As a case study of the unreliable narrator, SCHRODER is beautifully managed...Gaige...is an accomplished writer, and the novel elegantly navigates its ethical razor's edge, brining the reader along on a kind of joyride gone wrong...half sympathy-inducing mea culpa, half a bristling act of bravado and self-ignorance...Novelists like Gaige remind us that we live not in the age of the nineteenth-century marriage plot but in the era of the twenty-first century divorce plot...Gaige writes with a cool strangeness, a strong sense of style...Schroder is by turns dry, peculiar, expansive, and visionary."--Meghan O'Rourke, Bookforum
"Enthralling.... Gaige displays an unnerving insight into the grandiosity and fragility of the middle-aged male ego.... SCHRODER is clearly her breakout book. With its psychological acuity, emotional complexity and topical subject matter, it deserves all the success it can find. I wish there were such a thing as a Divorced Couples Book Club just so we could listen in on the tangled responses."--The Washington Post
"Eric is the unlikeliest of characters to charm a reader. His life is a tabloid drama: man abducts daughter, gets arrested and confesses in a letter to his estranged wife. It is to the credit of Amity Gaige, an American writer, that her third novel, SCHRODER, transforms this thriller plot into a deeply moving tale....What distinguishes SCHRODER is its insight and language....Ms. Gaige excels at landscapes; her writing has the still, clear beauty of a mountain lake."--The Economist
"Fascinating....In all, we are glad to be along for the ride. And when someone asks Schroder, near the novel's end, 'Do you miss it I mean, your made-up life'-we can assume that, in large part, he does. We can also confess, now we know Schroder so well, that we do too."--Buffalo News
"Gaige creates a fascinating and complex character in Erik, as he moves from the eccentric and slightly irresponsible father to a desperate man at the end of his rope . . . [an] expert exploration of the immigrant experience, alienation, and the unbreakable bond between parent and child."--Booklist
"Gaige's spot-on prose makes this quirky parental drama irresistible."--Good Housekeeping
"Impossible to put down....Gaige completely creates this alternative universe, and it is entirely suspenseful as readers are drawn to the Schroder/Kennedy character. It's a credit to Gaige's talents that she can create such a morally complex character."--Chicago Tribune, Editor's Choice
"In SCHRODER, Amity Gaige explores the rich, murky realm where parental devotion edges into mania, and logic crabwalks into crime. This offbeat, exquisitely written novel showcases a fresh, forceful young voice in American letters."--Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
"It's a fine line, sometimes, between disturbing and enrapturing. Amity Gaige's new novel, SCHRODER, treads that thrilling line-swiftly, and on tiptoe-for 270 pages. It is impossible to put down....Despite his criminal behavior, our intimacy with Eric makes his behavior, and this story, more tragic than enraging. Does he love his daughter We know that he thinks he does. But does carting her across state lines-in a stolen car, no less-constitute love Who's to say SCHRODER certainly doesn't give us an easy answer. But it digs deeply, satisfyingly, disturbingly into the question....she's created a riveting tale, at once infuriating, heartbreaking and human."--The Denver Post
"It's a mark of how good SCHRODER is that, upon finishing it, I immediately went out and read the rest of her work."--Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine
"Like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert, Schroder is charming and deceptive, likable and flawed, a conman who has a clever way with words. Schroder's tale is deeply engaging, and Gaige's writing is surprising and original, but the real pull of this magnetic novel is the moral ambiguity the reader feels."--People, 4 stars
"On occasion... a novel will provoke a host of tangled and disconcertingly conflicted reactions-revulsion and affection; blame and understanding; a connection that goes beyond surface sympathy to a deeper, and possibly unwanted, emotional recognition. These were among the things I experienced while reading Amity Gaige's astoundingly good novel SCHRODER."--The Wall Street Journal
"Prepare to be captivated by SCHRODER, a riveting novel by Amity Gaige with a unique and incredibly creative voice...SCHRODER is a book to be digested slowly, reread and discussed. It's quite a wild ride, but the miles fly by with Amity Gaige at the wheel."--The Missourian
"Quiet and deeply introspective . . . Tender moments of observation, regret and joy - all conveyed in unself-consciously lyrical prose - result in a radiant meditation on identity, memory and familial love and loss."--Publishers Weekly
"Strikingly original."--Reader's Digest
"Terrific.... SCHRODER grabs you early on, holds you with its lyrical prose and surprising insights and lingers in the mind long afterward."--The Pittsburgh Post Gazette
"The essence of the ersatz Rockefeller/Kennedy character is of course an epic, pathological narcissism, and this Gaige gets impressively right....Gaige writes beautifully....The novel's climactic chapter is also its best conceived: the item that brings about Schroder's downfall is perfect, both dramatic and mundane. The reader will realize that he or she has been given every detail necessary to see what was coming, yet didn't, which is plot-making of the highest order."--New York Times Book Review
"The measure of Gaige's great gifts as a storyteller is that she persuades you to believe in a situation that shouldn't be believable, and to love a narrator who shouldn't be lovable. Seldom has such a daring concept for a novel been grounded in such an appealing character."--Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom and The C

Author Bio

Amity Gaige's essays, articles, and stories have appeared in various publications, including the Yale Review, Los Angeles Times, O Magazine, The Literary Review, and in a 2009 collection of essays, Feed Me (Random House). She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a McDowell Colony Fellowship, and a Baltic Writing Residency Fellowship, and is currently the Visiting Writer at Amherst College. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family.