Nine Shiny Objects: A Novel
An “extraordinary”*
debut novel in the tradition of DeLillo and Egan, chronicling the eerily
intersecting lives of a series of American dreamers whose unforeseen links
reveal the divided heart of a haunted nation—and the battered grace that might
lead to its salvation.*Jenny Offill
June
26, 1947. Headlines across America report the sighting of nine pulsating lights
flying over the Cascade Mountains at speeds surpassing any aircraft. In
Chicago, inspired by the news, Oliver Danville, a failed actor now reduced to a
mediocre pool hustler, hitchhikes west in a fever-dream quest for a possible
sign from above that might illuminate his true calling. A chance encounter with
Saul Penrod, an Idaho farmer, and his family sets in motion the birth of “the
Seekers”—a collective of outcasts, interlopers, and idealists devoted to
creating a society where divisions of race, ethnicity, and sexuality are a
thing of the past. When Claudette Donen, a waitress on the lam from her
suffocating family, encounters the group, she is compulsively drawn to Oliver’s
sister Eileen, but before she is able to join the enigmatic community, it has
vanished.
Reunited across the country, the Seekers attempt
to settle in the suburbs of Long Island. One night, their purpose suddenly
revealed, a stranger emerges, and a horrific crime ensues. In the decades that
follow, the perpetrators, survivors, and their children will be forced to face
the consequences of what happened—a reckoning that will involve Charlie
Ranagan, a traveling salesman; Max Felt, a dissolute late-1960s rock star;
Alice Linwood, an increasingly paranoid radio host; Stanley West, a struggling
African American poet; Marly Feldberg, a Greenwich Village painter; and Debbie
Vasquez, a Connecticut teenager trapped by an avalanche of midnight legacies.
Each will prove to be a piece of a puzzle that, when assembled, reveals a
shocking truth about the clash between the optimism of those who seek
inspiration from spacious skies, and the venom of others who relish the
underworld—not only via conspiratorial maneuverings, but the literal unearthing
of the dead. The result is one of the most exciting, and unforgettable, debut
novels in recent memory, and the launch of a major career in American letters.
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Description
An “extraordinary”*
debut novel in the tradition of DeLillo and Egan, chronicling the eerily
intersecting lives of a series of American dreamers whose unforeseen links
reveal the divided heart of a haunted nation—and the battered grace that might
lead to its salvation.*Jenny Offill
June
26, 1947. Headlines across America report the sighting of nine pulsating lights
flying over the Cascade Mountains at speeds surpassing any aircraft. In
Chicago, inspired by the news, Oliver Danville, a failed actor now reduced to a
mediocre pool hustler, hitchhikes west in a fever-dream quest for a possible
sign from above that might illuminate his true calling. A chance encounter with
Saul Penrod, an Idaho farmer, and his family sets in motion the birth of “the
Seekers”—a collective of outcasts, interlopers, and idealists devoted to
creating a society where divisions of race, ethnicity, and sexuality are a
thing of the past. When Claudette Donen, a waitress on the lam from her
suffocating family, encounters the group, she is compulsively drawn to Oliver’s
sister Eileen, but before she is able to join the enigmatic community, it has
vanished.
Reunited across the country, the Seekers attempt
to settle in the suburbs of Long Island. One night, their purpose suddenly
revealed, a stranger emerges, and a horrific crime ensues. In the decades that
follow, the perpetrators, survivors, and their children will be forced to face
the consequences of what happened—a reckoning that will involve Charlie
Ranagan, a traveling salesman; Max Felt, a dissolute late-1960s rock star;
Alice Linwood, an increasingly paranoid radio host; Stanley West, a struggling
African American poet; Marly Feldberg, a Greenwich Village painter; and Debbie
Vasquez, a Connecticut teenager trapped by an avalanche of midnight legacies.
Each will prove to be a piece of a puzzle that, when assembled, reveals a
shocking truth about the clash between the optimism of those who seek
inspiration from spacious skies, and the venom of others who relish the
underworld—not only via conspiratorial maneuverings, but the literal unearthing
of the dead. The result is one of the most exciting, and unforgettable, debut
novels in recent memory, and the launch of a major career in American letters.
