Veering between the comic and tragic, the self-contemptuous and the inspired, Leaving the Atocha Station is a dazzling introduction to one of the smartest, funniest and most audacious writers of a generation
Born in Kansas in 1979, BEN LERNER is the author of three books of poetry, The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, and the recipient of a Howard Foundation Fellowship. In 2011 he became the first American to win the Munster State Prize for International Poetry. He teaches in the writing program at Brooklyn College. This is his first novel.
Gales of laughter howl through [this] remarkable first novel. It's
packed full of gags and page-long one-liners... intensely and
unusually brilliant
*Observer*
[This book] stood out from everything else I read this year
*Observer*
The best new novel I've read for a long time
*James Meek*
Seductively intelligent and stylish writing, mercilessly comic in
the ways it strips the creative ego bare
*Independent*
Funny, uplifting and moving... Lerner's genius is to put into words
that universal, often-lost period when most young people are
commitment-free but weighed down with a sense of the nascent
self... We finish this book feeling a little cleverer, and a little
happier
*Financial Times*
Wonderful precision and comic timing... Superb
*Metro*
An anatomy of a generation's uncertainty and self-involvement, the
novel offers a carefully constructed snapshot of a nation in
doubt... Beautifully written
*Times Literary Supplement*
The overall narrative is structured around subtle, delicate
moments... They're comic but they're also beautiful and touching
and precise
*Guardian*
Hilarious and cracklingly intelligent, fully alive and original in
every sentence, and abuzz with the feel of our late-late-modern
moment
*Guardian, Books of the Year 2011*
[A] subtle, sinuous, and very funny first novel. . . . [with] a
beguiling mixture of lightness and weight. There are wonderful
sentences and jokes on almost every page
*New Yorker*
One of the most talked-about fiction debuts this year, it's a book
for anyone who's ever been young and self-conscious in a foreign
city. The Spanish travails (or lack of them) of Lerner's preening
poet narrator are painful, well-observed and often very funny
*Hari Kunzru*
One of the funniest (and truest) novels I know of by a writer of
his generation. . . . [A] dazzlingly good novel
*New York Review of Books*
A dazzling first novel that does not flinch from difficulty but
asks questions of language and art and what we can do with them
*Big Issue*
Utterly charming. Lerner's self-hating, lying, overmedicated,
brilliant fool of a hero is a memorable character, and his voice
speaks with a music distinctly and hilariously all his own
*Paul Auster*
I love to death Ben Lerner's novel . . . [A] significant book
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
A marvellous novel, not least because of the magical way that it
reverses the postmodernist spell, transmuting a fraudulent figure
into a fully dimensional and compelling character
*Wall Street Journal*
A slightly deranged, philosophically inclined monologue in the
Continental tradition running from Büchner's Lenz to Thomas
Bernhard and Javier Marías. The adoption of this mode by a young
American narrator-solipsistic, overmedicated, feckless yet
ambitious-ends up feeling like the most natural thing in the
world
*New Statesman, Best Books of 2011*
Lerner's remarkable first novel is a bildungsroman and meditation
and slacker tale fused by a precise, reflective and darkly comic
voice. It is also a revealing study of what it's like to be a young
American abroad... for America, the path from The Sun Also Rises to
Leaving the Atocha Station seems frighteningly downward
*New York Times Book Review*
This debut has already created quite a stir in the US. Jonathan
Franzen is a fan ("hilarious and crackingly intelligent") as is
Paul Auster
*Bookseller*
Billy Liar as written by Proust
*BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review*
Hugely entertaining
*Liz Jensen*
The author's poetic skills and sandpaper-dry humour mounted a charm
offensive
*Skinny*
An extraordinary novel about the intersections of art and reality
in contemporary life
*John Ashbery*
[In this] short but potent novel . . . Lerner sets up profound
questions about the possibilities of art and human experience . . .
beguiling
*The Times*
An odd, utterly distinctive book... I do recommend it
*Independent*
Lerner conveys, with the lightest of touches, the wordly truth that
the truly profound and totally mundane are sometimes feather-width
apart
*Newcastle Evening Chronicle*
One of the most remarkable books I have read this year... Lerner's
poetry manifests itself in elegantly stilted grammar, in
contradiction and self-cancellation, in painfully self-aware
self-mirroring and especially in misunderstanding... The camber of
Adam's thoughts is conveyed with astonishing grace
*Scotsman*
A thoroughly first-rate first novel: properly cutting edge,
searingly clever and dark and beautiful
*Dazed & Confused*
I was amused and appalled by the anti-hero
*Guardian*
A refined comedy
*New Statesman*
The sharpest and funniest novel I have read this year
*Mail on Sunday*
At its core, it's a deeply serious novel that - almost by stealth -
makes you think afresh about all those late night imponderables to
do with art and the meaning of life... A stunning debut
*Metro*
Acclaimed debut novel that follows the fortunes of an alienated,
self-medicating American poetry student living in Madrid
*Observer*
This arrestingly clever debut novel blends lyricism, wit and
emotional self-laceration
*Sunday Telegraph*
Very funny... One of the most acclaimed debut novels of 2012
*Evening Standard*
Lerner is a multi-form talent who crosses genres, modes, and
media... one of the most important young writers working today
*Contemporary Literature*
One of the funniest (and truest) novels I know of
*Paris Review*
Clever, funny and beautifully written, I enjoyed every page
*Foyles website*
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