Purple America

A tour de force, a critical and commercial sensation in the US, and a book that must contend for all the literary prizes — with this book, Rick Moody, in one bound, lands in the very front rank of American writers.

The Great American Novel of its year

The fission of a nuclear family, of a nuclear reactor and of the idea of America

A novel that honours the classical unities — it arcs perfectly across one long, long day in New England — but is thoroughly contemporary in its understanding of the anxieties, paradoxes and desolate dreams of Our Age

Astonishing observational and metaphorical skill

The Holy Trinity of all-American literature, Updike, Bellow and Roth, are now in their twilight years. Here is the first of the next generation to stake a claim on permanence and greatness