NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER âĒ In this mesmerizing novel, Ethan Canin, the author of America America and The Palace Thief, explores the nature of genius, rivalry, ambition, and love among multiple generations of a gifted family.
Milo Andret is born with an unusual mind. A lonely child growing up in the woods of northern Michigan in the 1950s, he gives little thought to his own talent. But with his acceptance at U.C. Berkeley he realizes the extent, and the risks, of his singular gifts. California in the seventies is a seduction, opening Miloâs eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman he meets thereâand the rival he meets alongside herâwill haunt him for the rest of his life. For Miloâs brilliance is entwined with a dark need that soon grows to threaten his work, his family, even his existence.
Spanning seven decades as it moves from California to Princeton to the Midwest to New York, A Doubterâs Almanac tells the story of a family as it explores the way ambition lives alongside destructiveness, obsession alongside torment, love alongside grief. It is a story of how the flame of genius both lights and scorches every generation it touches. Graced by stunning prose and brilliant storytelling, A Doubterâs Almanac is a surprising, suspenseful, and deeply moving novel, a major work by a writer who has been hailed as âthe most mature and accomplished novelist of his generation.â
Praise for A Doubterâs Almanac
â551 pages of bliss . . . devastating and wonderful . . . dazzling . . . You come away from the book wanting to reevaluate your choices and your relationships. Itâs a rare book that can do that, and itâs a rare joy to discover such a book.ââEsquire
â[Canin] is at the top of his form, fluent, immersive, confident. You might not know where heâs taking you, but the characters are so vivid, Hansâs voice rendered so precisely, that itâs impossible not to trust in the story. . . . The delicate networks of emotion and connection that make up a family are illuminated, as if by magic, via his prose.ââSlate
âAlternately explosive and deeply interior.ââNew York (âEight Books You Need to Readâ)
âA blazingly intelligent novel.ââLos Angeles Times
â[A] beautifully written novel.ââThe New York Times Book Review (Editorsâ Choice)