After the Parade: A Novel

After the Parade: A Novel

The debut novel from award-winning author Lori Ostlundâ€”â€œsmart, resonant, and imbued with beautyâ€ (Publishers Weekly) that â€œprovides considerable pleasure and emotional powerâ€ (The New York Times Book Review)â€”about a man who leaves his longtime partner in New Mexico for a tragicomic road trip deep into the mysteries of his own Midwestern childhood.

Sensitive, bighearted, and achingly self-conscious, forty-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confinements of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After twenty years under the Pygmalion-like care of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to take control of his own fate. But soon after establishing himself in San Francisco, Aaron sees that real freedom will not come until he has made peace with his memories of Mortonville, Minnesota: a cramped town whose four hundred souls form a constellation of Aaronâ€™s childhood heartbreaks and hopes.

After Aaronâ€™s father died in the town parade, it was the larger-than life misfits of his childhood who helped Aaron find his place in a world hostile to difference. But Aaronâ€™s sense of rejection runs deep: when Aaron was seventeen, Doloresâ€”his loving yet selfish and enigmatic motherâ€”vanished one night. And when, all these years later, a new friend in San Francisco offers Aaron a way to locate his mother, his past and present collide, forcing Aaron to rethink his place in the world.

â€œTouching and often hilariousâ€¦Ostlund writes with acuity and refreshing honesty about the messy complexity of being a social animal in todayâ€™s worldâ€¦â€ (Booklist, starred review). â€œEverything here aches, from the lucid prose to the sensitively treated characters to their beautiful and heartbreaking storiesâ€¦An example of realism in its most potent iteration: not a nearly arranged plot orchestrated by an authorial god but an authentic, empathetic representation of life as it truly isâ€ (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). After the Parade is a glorious anthem for the outsider.
Country USA
Brand Scribner
Manufacturer Simon & Schuster
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 2016-07-26
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781476790114

Country	USA
Brand	Scribner
Manufacturer	Simon & Schuster
Binding	Paperback
ReleaseDate	2016-07-26
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781476790114

After the Parade: A Novel

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