About this item
Highlights
- Stella Tęsknota was ready to marry Blake Yourrick, the troubled if earnest protagonist of Infinite Regress.
- Author(s): Joshua Hren
- 442 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
Book Synopsis
Stella Tęsknota was ready to marry Blake Yourrick, the troubled if earnest protagonist of Infinite Regress. In this stand-alone novel (and loose sequel), set after Blake abruptly-and inexplicably-breaks off their engagement, Stella throws herself into a tough South Chicago teaching assignment. There she meets Peter Clavier (P.C.), a psychologist-activist whose uncle-a pastor-has long prophesied for Peter a future of otherworldly greatness. As Stella draws out Peter's past, the novel follows P.C.'s trajectory from a Cabrini-Green childhood to surreal stardom in the orbit of underwritten radical politics.When his boss offers Peter a marquee microphone and he moves to D.C., Stella returns home to Milwaukee in search of steady ground. She finds her self-sacrificing father hosting basement meetings that mix nostalgia and conspiracy. In the confluence of comfort and catastrophe, Stella is invited to wager on faith.
Written with a style and sensibility that have been compared to David Foster Wallace and Dostoevsky, James Joyce and Saul Bellow, Blue Walls Falling Down chronicles the eternal questions that agitate our subterranean frequencies and demand more than the human spirit can give or answer alone.
Review Quotes
"Joshua Hren has crafted a novel that is as spiritually challenging as it is beautifully written. Blue Walls Falling Down delves into the complexities of human existence, offering a poignant meditation on the search for meaning in a world often overshadowed by loss and uncertainty. This is a novel that will linger in the hearts and minds of readers long after the final page."
-Luke Burgis, author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
"Joshua Hren's Blue Walls Falling Down conveys the loneliness, desperation, and extremism that afflict America in our time. The novel's memorable characters yearn for family, seek forgiveness, and search for justice. Synthesizing a fascinating array of influences (from Joseph Conrad to Jack Kerouac, Flannery O'Connor to Ralph Ellison and America's jazz masters) and exploring the peripheries of urban poverty and political radicalism, Hren has written an ambitious and poetic tragedy."
-Christopher J. Scalia, ed. Scalia Speaks and On Faith
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________PRAISE FOR THE WORK OF JOSHUA HREN"A rare bird . . . not just a brilliant novel but, in the truest sense, a divine comedy."
-The Los Angeles Review of Books review of Infinite Regress
"We few, we happy few, who follow the world of Catholic fiction like it's a major league championship, welcome a new frontrunner."
-Australia's Catholic Weekly review of Infinite Regress
"The mending words of Joshua Hren tickle our word-shaped fancy and testify to truths eternal."
-R.R. Reno, editor of First Things
"What an intense read! The novel keeps asking the reader, 'How do you live if you're going to die?' Infinite Regress faces the evils and tragedies of our current cultural moment with prophetic eyes."
-Jessica Hooten Wilson
" . . . the novel's most canny feature: penetratingly funny satires of the shallowness of contemporary American life. It surpasses C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters in its originality, cunning, speed, and penetration into the mystery of evil."
-The University Bookman review of Infinite Regress
" . . . a stunning combination of alliterative verse and a Joycean stream of consciousness reminiscent of Ulysses."
-America Magazine review of In the Wine Press