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We Are Not Ourselves: A Novel
Author:
Thomas, Matthew
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3620.H
Print Run: 150000
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ISBN-13: 9781476756660
LCCN: 2013044414
Imprint: Simon & Schuster
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Pub Date: 08/19/2014
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $28.00
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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620 p. ; 25 cm.
H 9.25",
W 6.25",
D 1.3",
2.07 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Fiction Core Collection, 18th ed.
Fiction Core Collection, 19th ed.
Fiction Core Collection, 20th ed.
Los Angeles Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers: Adult Fiction
Publishers Weekly Bestsellers
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Awards:
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Library Journal Starred Reviews
New York Times Notable Books
Publishers Weekly Annual Best Books Selections
Publishers Weekly Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Library Journal
Publishers Weekly
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TIPS Subjects:
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Domestic Fiction
Historical Fiction
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Sagas
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LC Subjects:
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Domestic fiction
FICTION / General
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Sagas
Historical fiction
Historical fiction
Ireland, Emigration and immigration, History, Fiction
Irish Americans, Queens (New York, N.Y.), History, 20th century, Fiction
Queens (New York, N.Y.), History, 20th century, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Domestic fiction
Historical fiction
Ireland, Immigration and emigration, History, Fiction
Irish Americans, Queens (New York, N.Y.), History, Fiction
Queens (New York, N.Y.), History, 20th century, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 05/01/2014 |
| Convinced she is about to embrace the cosmopolitan life she has long dreamed of, Eileen Tumulty leaves her Irish immigrant parents to start a new life with scientist Ed Leery, whose lack of ambition soon threatens their marriage and their new family. But Eileen, Ed, and their son, Connell, will do anything to weather the storms that threaten the future they long to spend together. Debut Novel, 640pp., 150K, Auth res: Montclair, NJ |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Library Journal | 08/01/2014 |
| This epic and emotionally draining novel is centered on the life of Eileen Tumulty who lives in Queens, NY, in the mid-20th century. An only child of Irish parents, Eileen is smart and ambitious and looking for a better life for herself. She's moving ahead in her career in nursing when she meets and marries Ed Leary, a PhD student in neurochemistry who decides he will teach at a community college despite more lucrative and prestigious offers. As years go by and the neighborhood changes, Eileen is desperate to move from their multiple-family home to the suburbs, but the entrenched and increasingly eccentric Ed is adamant about staying put. The house they finally move to is beyond their means and needs work, and though Ed has the skills, it soon becomes apparent that the project is beyond him. A doctor's visit reveals deeper trouble that presages Ed's long, slow, painful decline. VERDICT The debut author has created a memorable character in Eileen, who is both intelligent and clueless, focusing on her ideals and fantasies and attempting vainly to make reality conform to her aspirations. The depiction of Ed's illness is realistic, powerful, artistically delivered, and occasionally humorous, and readers will be drawn in. [See Prepub Alert, 3/3/14; see also Thomas's address to librarians at an S. & S. Adult Librarian Preview, p. 90.]. James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib. 640p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 04/21/2014 |
| In his powerful and significant debut novel, Thomas masterfully evokes one woman's life in the context of a brilliantly observed Irish working-class milieu. Eileen Tumulty was born in the early '40s, the only child and dutiful caretaker of alcoholic parents. As a young woman, she hopes to leave her family's dingy apartment in Woodside, Queens, and move up the social ladder. Eileen falls in love with and marries Ed Leary, a quiet neuroscientist whom she sees as the means to an upper-middle-class future. But Ed is dedicated to pure scientific research, and he turns down lucrative job offers from pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions. The couple's apartment in Jackson Heights is a step up from Eileen's parents' apartment, but she wants a home in tony Westchester County. Later, Eileen pursues an arduous career as a nursing administrator to secure a future for their son, Connell. But once she gets her gracious but dilapidated fixer-upper in Bronxville, in southern Westchester, Ed is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, and the family slowly endures "the encroaching of a fathomless darkness." Thomas works on a large canvas to create a memorable depiction of Eileen's vibrant spirit, the intimacy of her love for Ed, and the desperate stoicism she exhibits as reality narrows her dreams. Her life, observed over a span of six decades, comes close to a definitive portrait of American social dynamics in the 20th century. Thomas's emotional truthfulness combines with the novel's texture and scope to create an unforgettable narrative. (Sept.). 640p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 09/01/2014 |
| We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas' epic first novel, was 10 years in the making and, upon completion, the subject of a vigorous publishers' bidding war. Readers will understand why. Thomas' novel is a 600-page Irish-American family saga that empathetically presents day-to-day life in the outer boroughs and suburbs of New York City during the late 20th century. At the story's center is Eileen Leary, nee Tumulty. Born in 1941 in Queens, Eileen is the daughter of recent Irish immigrants. As the novel cannily dramatizes, her fierce, upwardly mobile aspirations are formed in reaction to the difficult, working-class lives of her hard-working mother and her charismatic, hard-drinking father. Eileen, who, pragmatically, trains as a nurse, wants a different life. And Edward Leary, the young scientist she marries, seems to offer a path to that life. But Ed is a sort of abstemious idealist. He turns down lucrative job offers because he believes the students he teaches at Bronx Community College deserve as good an education as students at NYU. He sees no need to move from their Queens home as the complexion of the neighborhood changes. And then, as their only child Connell becomes a teenager, Ed gives Eileen her biggest challenge yet. Eileen is dedicated, responsible, loving, but also frustrated, sometimes angry and emotionally distant. Readers will no doubt differ on whether Eileen is noble or obtuse--or maybe both in the same moment. The possibility that all or none of these opinions about Eileen is correct is what makes We Are Not Ourselves such an interesting read. Alden Mudge. 640. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 06/15/2014 |
| An Irish-American family in New York City pursues simple dreams in a long and only partially satisfying first novel.Thomas' debut opens promisingly with the outsize character of Big Mike Tumulty, an Irish immigrant and bar-stool sage possessed of "a terrible charisma." The humor and brisk pace of this well-drawn section too rarely recur in the many dry, dour pages that follow. Mike's daughter and the book's heroine, Eileen, arrives in 1941 and grows up in a household where affection and money are scarce. She pursues a nursing career, marries a teacher named Ed Leary and has a son, Connell. Eileen is driven to improve their housing, from rented rooms in a multifamily Queens home to owning that home and finally the big move to the costly suburb of Bronxville. Only a few pages later, at the book's midpoint, they learn that Ed, at 51, has early-onset Alzheimer's, "the most virulent kind....It dismantles motor functions and speech as it erases the memory." Thomas, who has relied to this point on thinly linked vignettes, is most effective in the sustained picture of Ed's terrible decline and Eileen's fierce struggle to maintain his dignity and her control. And a story almost painfully confined to the family trio now acquires a couple of colorful characters in a healer who speaks through the spirit Vywamus and a hired man named Sergei who offers strength and the chance of new passion.Despite its epic size and aspirations, the novel is underpopulated and often underwritten, a quality that does make its richer moments stand out while stoking the appetite for more of those in fewer pages. 640pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 03/03/2014 |
| An epic tale about an Irish American couple and the constraints of the American dream, this first novel is benefiting from tremendous in-house enthusiasm. From what I've seen so far, it's a poignant, pointed read that should please a broad range of readers. Eileen Tumulty, raised by her immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in the 1940s and 1950s, is determined not to settle for one of the boisterous, glad-handing types her girlfriends adore. Serious-minded scientist Ed Leary seems exactly the right sort to carry her to the larger world, but their marriage founders as she realizes that he really doesn't care about increasingly bigger, better homes, cars, and jobs. The portrait of a marriage and of a crucial time in American history; great for book clubs. 640p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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9781476756660,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 09/07/2014 |
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