The Second Coming

Available
4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
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Product Details
Price
$32.00  $29.76
Publisher
Knopf Publishing Group
Publish Date
Pages
608
Dimensions
6.14 X 9.21 X 1.57 inches | 1.95 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780593536926

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About the Author
GARTH RISK HALLBERG's first novel, City on Fire, was a New York Times and international best seller and was selected as one of the best books of 2015 by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Vogue. It was the basis for the Apple TV+ series of the same name. He is also the author of the novella A Field Guide to the North American Family. In 2017, Granta named him one of the Best of Young American Novelists. His work has been translated into seventeen languages.
Reviews
"A gritty epic about a teen girl in trouble and her estranged father looking for a second chance." --Boston Globe

"Dazzling . . . Heartfelt . . . The dance of life and death between these two characters, father and child, is the heart and soul of this book, a complex, moving, insanely passionate, frightening, and weirdly hopeful story of 'I can't quit you' . . . Hallberg is a smart and talented writer who likes to take risks." --Helen Schulman, Air Mail

"Hallberg's novel takes its place in a lineage [with] Don DeLillo's 1997 epic Underworld and Jonathan Franzen's densely woven family dramas . . . It's a big, attractively baroque construction." --Wall Street Journal

"Exuberantly inventive . . . The author's spot-on wit remains playfully evident." --Thomas Mallon, The New Yorker

"Hallberg writes from a place of keen emotional perception." --Interview Magazine

"At its core, this is a tale of the love that makes a family and how it does so." --Booklist (starred review)

"Reading Garth Risk Hallberg is a constant delightful surprise--you never know what's coming next: a gorgeous turn of phrase, a perfect pop culture reference, a brilliant new observation, a jaw-dropping plot twist. And all of these gifts are on full display in The Second Coming, a story about a father bound up by his mistakes, a daughter bound up in her silence, and a family in need of saving. It's a beautiful and daring novel, as inventive as it is breathtaking." --Nathan Hill, author of Wellness

"A portrait of a daughter in crisis and a father in need of redemption, Garth Risk Hallberg's The Second Coming is a powerful statement about the clarifying sense of purpose to be found in parental love, and how we demand more of ourselves for the sake of our children. Hallberg's Ethan is a fascinating study in whether a certain kind of arrested American male, consumed early on by purposelessness and addiction, can in fact have a second act, even if his first is still, somehow, belatedly, being written, and not entirely by him." --Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves

"Garth Risk Hallberg's The Second Coming is a sprawling, aching, ultimately hopeful account of a father's love for a daughter and a daughter's defiance of that love when all too often it manifests as dysfunction. Hallberg deals with the dilemma of parental inheritance with a light touch, and the grace that finally descends on the Aspern clan is not only transformative but triumphant." --Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End

"Garth Risk Hallberg's great gift is his ability to translate epic themes into intensely intimate, cumulatively powerful novels. Full of tension and emotion and populated by vivid characters and ideas, The Second Coming builds word by word to capture the intricacies of life while revealing its own breathtaking scope. This is a world you can fully enter and explore--one that resembles our own while expanding our understanding of who we are." --Christina Baker Kline, author of #1 New York Times best seller Orphan Train