Here They Come
Dec 2007 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Ebook
260
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
About this ebook
“I can imagine both Jane Austen and Raymond Carver pouring over this masterly novel” of a girl’s coming-of-age in 1970s New York (Frank McCourt).
From the National Endowment for the Arts Award–winning author of the New York Times Notable Book, The Sea of Trees, comes the “shockingly funny” (Vanity Fair), “wholly unsentimental but peculiarly hopeful portrait of family love and growing up scarred but sturdy” (LA Weekly).
Splitting time between her off-kilter family in a garbage-strewn apartment and a lonely hot dog vendor who trades Hershey bars for questionable favors, the pragmatic and absolutely fearless thirteen-year-old Smitty stands firmly grounded in a city that is stifling, violent, unpredictable, and full of life. It’s not easy to stay balanced. Not with two precocious sisters, a pothead brother, a depressed but steel-willed mother, an infirm grandmother, and an idler dad who’s vanished with his appallingly stupid mistress. Now, with dark humor, deadpan resilience, and a quiet sense of the surreal, Smitty recounts a remarkable chain of events that will make this the most transcendent year of her young life.
In Here They Come, the PEN New England Award–winning Yannick Murphy “flawlessly captures a child’s-eye view of a battered society and a battered family” (Los Angeles Times), “creating a world as magical and harrowing as the struggle to come to grips with maturity” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
From the National Endowment for the Arts Award–winning author of the New York Times Notable Book, The Sea of Trees, comes the “shockingly funny” (Vanity Fair), “wholly unsentimental but peculiarly hopeful portrait of family love and growing up scarred but sturdy” (LA Weekly).
Splitting time between her off-kilter family in a garbage-strewn apartment and a lonely hot dog vendor who trades Hershey bars for questionable favors, the pragmatic and absolutely fearless thirteen-year-old Smitty stands firmly grounded in a city that is stifling, violent, unpredictable, and full of life. It’s not easy to stay balanced. Not with two precocious sisters, a pothead brother, a depressed but steel-willed mother, an infirm grandmother, and an idler dad who’s vanished with his appallingly stupid mistress. Now, with dark humor, deadpan resilience, and a quiet sense of the surreal, Smitty recounts a remarkable chain of events that will make this the most transcendent year of her young life.
In Here They Come, the PEN New England Award–winning Yannick Murphy “flawlessly captures a child’s-eye view of a battered society and a battered family” (Los Angeles Times), “creating a world as magical and harrowing as the struggle to come to grips with maturity” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
About the author
Yannick Murphy is the author of The Call; Signed, Mata Hari; Here They Come; and The Sea of Trees, as well as two story collections and several children's books. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Chesterfield Screenwriting Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Laurence L. & Thomas Winship/PEN New England Award. Her work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She lives in Vermont with her husband and children.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
