“This deeply affecting portrait of a fractured family and an iconic town is also a timely story of America’s growing pains as we struggle with clashing ideas about just who ‘belongs’ and what it means to be a member of a true community. What a beautiful debut.” Julia Glass, author of Vigil Harbor and National Book Award–winning Three Junes
Description
Winner of the Faulkner Society Award for Best Novel
In a small seaside city on the Jersey Shore, three half-siblings confront the death of a distant and bullying patriarch. They now have the chance to imagine new relationships and new futures, ones that would have been near-unthinkable while their father was alive.
Caught in their crossfire are the conservative religious communities that border Asbury Park, the longtime locals who have been pushed to the fringe by the shore’s revitalization, and the legendary town upon which the whole world seems to converge. Slowly, however, they come to understand that everything—their future, their happiness—depends on whether they can face themselves.
Wise, perceptive, and provocative, Greetings from Asbury Park is a remarkable literary debut in the tradition of great American novels such as Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. It is a deep interrogation of place that depicts flawed characters as they break through to adulthood, truth, and to a moral relationship with the world.
Praise
“This deeply affecting portrait of a fractured family and an iconic town is also a timely story of America’s growing pains as we struggle with clashing ideas about just who ‘belongs’ and what it means to be a member of a true community. What a beautiful debut.” Julia Glass, author of Vigil Harbor and National Book Award–winning Three Junes
“Greetings from Asbury Park is phenomenal…To summon the Shore—and Asbury Park, no less—in all its delirious breathtaking bull-headed complexity requires an artist of the first order and Turtel is such an artist. Greetings from Asbury Park is a novel to be cherished, a blazing summer for the heart and the mind.” Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“It takes some audacity to name your book after a classic album, but Daniel Turtel earns the right. Greeting from Asbury Park is a remarkable debut from a talented writer—ambitious, moving, full of complicated, thorny characters and enough Jersey Shore ambiance that you can almost smell the boardwalk.” Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Election and Little Children
“There is no shortage of ideas in Greetings from Asbury Park…Turtel contends with the ways children are haunted by their parents in both life and death, the anxieties of legitimacy, the fragile but tight strands of connection that hold communities together, the echoing effects of emotional trauma and the impossibility of escaping from memory, the ongoing frustration of racism and homophobia’s existence into our present, and the taboos of incest.” Brooklyn Rail
“In recent years, the revitalization of Asbury Park, New Jersey, has abounded with unexpected historical resonances, class conflict, and political debates—all things that also make for memorable fiction. Daniel H. Turtel’s new novel ventures into some of these clashes, following the children of a now-deceased man who face an uncertain future.” Vol. 1 Brooklyn
Details
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| Release Day | Apr 4, 2022 |
| Release Date | April 5, 2022 |
| Release Date Machine | 1649116800 |
| Imprint | Blackstone Publishing |
| Provider | Blackstone Publishing |
| Categories | New Releases, Black Friday Sale, Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Family Life, Small Town & Rural |
Author Bio
Daniel H. Turtel is the author of the novel Greetings from Asbury Park, winner of the Faulkner Society Award for Best Novel. He graduated from Duke University with a degree in mathematics and received an MFA from the New School. He now lives in New York City.
Narrator Bio
Karen Chilton is a New York–based actor and writer and an accomplished voice-over artist and narrator. She has narrated dozens of audiobooks, won three AudioFile Earphones Awards, and in 2020 won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Nonfiction Narration. Her voice can be heard on numerous national network television, radio, and Internet advertising campaigns.
Will Damron has won several Earphones Awards and been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He has had acting roles off-Broadway and on stage and screen throughout the country.
Overview
Winner of the Faulkner Society Award for Best Novel
In a small seaside city on the Jersey Shore, three half-siblings confront the death of a distant and bullying patriarch. They now have the chance to imagine new relationships and new futures, ones that would have been near-unthinkable while their father was alive.
Caught in their crossfire are the conservative religious communities that border Asbury Park, the longtime locals who have been pushed to the fringe by the shore’s revitalization, and the legendary town upon which the whole world seems to converge. Slowly, however, they come to understand that everything—their future, their happiness—depends on whether they can face themselves.
Wise, perceptive, and provocative, Greetings from Asbury Park is a remarkable literary debut in the tradition of great American novels such as Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. It is a deep interrogation of place that depicts flawed characters as they break through to adulthood, truth, and to a moral relationship with the world.