Spectacular Happiness: A Novel

(Paperback)

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From the author of Listening To Prozac comes a novel of ideas about a man driven to topple the wealth and status obsessed culture around him. From Chekhov to Walker Percy, from William Carlos Williams to Ethan Canin, doctors have turned to fiction with a compelling acuteness of observation. Now Peter Kramer joins their ranks with a sly and provocative novel. Like his international bestseller Listening To Prozac, Spectacular Happiness examines the effects of drug-induced social adaptation; like Should You Leave it weighs the relative values of intimacy and autonomy. But here Kramer is free to plumb the depths of his imagination and he has done so with spectacular results. Someone has been blowing up bayfront trophy homes on Cape Cod and doing a meticulous job of it. Chip Samuels has been fingered as the prime suspect. He seems an odd choice: a junior college English teacher and part-time handyman, he is a devoted friend, husband and father. But he did it, all right out of loyalty to a friend and to the radical ideals he and his wife once shared. Pursued by the FBI and a voracious media, Chip has limited time in which to explain himself to his estranged son and rescue his wife from her medicated conformity. His only way out may be to turn his notoriety into celebrity - to exploit 'the society of the spectacle.'

Reviews

The Boston Globe The author of Listening to Prozac makes a fine novelist, telling a gripping story while at the same time commenting on the rich, radicals, politics, corruption, and the media. Newsweek A serious novel of ideas. Chicago Tribune A terrific thriller plot...Kramer has a perceptive eye...in the small, telling details he chooses for his portraits. The Seattle Times This novel is a feast of big ideas, memorable characters, and heroic actions. It is a phenomenal fiction debut. The Christian Science Monitor The effect is something like reading Jaws from the shark's point of view...It's wacky and wicked and brilliant. Talk Deeply moving. Providence Journal An elegantly lyrical and provocative first novel.

Author Bio

Peter D. Kramer is the author of Should You Leave, Listening To Prozac, and Moments Of Engagement. He has written for The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, The Washington Post, the London Times Literary Supplement and U.S. News & World Report, among other publications. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour at Brown University.