Wish You Were Here - by Stewart O'Nan (Paperback)

About the Book

Award-winning writer O'Nan has been acclaimed by critics as one of the most accomplished novelists writing today. Now comes "his most complete work to date, filled with the type of life lessons that the best fiction has to offer and from an author firmly in control of his art" (Rob Stout, "Orlando Sentinel").

Book Synopsis

Award-winning writer Stewart O'Nan has been acclaimed by critics as one of the most accomplished novelists writing today. Now comes his finest and most complete novel to date.

A year after the death of her husband, Henry, Emily Maxwell gathers her family by Lake Chautauqua in western New York for what will be the last vacation at their summer cottage. Joining is her sister-in-law, who silently mourns the sale of the lake house, and a long-lost love. Emily's firebrand daughter, a recovering alcoholic recently separated from her husband, brings her children from Detroit. Emily's son, who has quit his job and mortgaged his future to pursue his art, comes accompanied by his children and his wife, who is secretly heartened to be visiting the house for the last time.

Memories of past summers resurface, old rivalries flare up, and love is rekindled and born anew, resulting in a timeless novel drawn, as the best writing often is, from the ebbs and flow of daily life.

Review Quotes

Praise for Wish You Were Here:

Winner of the Connecticut Book Award for Fiction
A New York Times Notable Book
A New York Times Book Review Notable Fiction
A Chicago Tribune Favorite Book
A Book Sense 76 Selection

"[O'Nan's] finest and deepest novel to date . . . The action rises and ebbs with the rhythms of daily life-meals, swimming, after-dinner videos, the children's bedtime. . . . The general absence of melodrama allows O'Nan to focus on the characters, and he draws them with sympathy and subtlety, especially the women." --Ruth Franklin, The New York Times Book Review

"Wish You Were Here offers a stark and brilliantly mesmerizing glimpse into the lives of the Maxwells, the most aggressively average American family this side of The Corrections. . . . The joy of the novel--and O'Nan's triumph--is the subtle manner in which the alternating voices draw in the reader. You read on less to find out what happens to the Maxwells than to become better acquainted with the characters, whom O'Nan makes fascinating and familiar. Here are 'our real lives.'" --Joanna Smith Rakoff, The Los Angeles Times

"O'Nan reveals how close a good and caring family can sit by disaster with disaster nevertheless held in abeyance." --Peter Temes, The Baltimore Sun

"Marvelous. . . . Readers will not have to wish they were here. From his slow start to his gentle resolution, O'Nan will transport them, and the familiarity of this fictional tribe will harass and lull them in turn, just like family in real life." --Susan Hall-Balduf, The Detroit Free Press

"Riveting. . . . O'Nan has written the perfect summer-by-the-lake read. . . . This is the landscape of family Jonathan Franzen illuminates in The Corrections, or Jane Smiley in Ordinary Love." --Brian Bouldrey, The Chicago Tribune

"Filled with the type of life lessons that the best fiction has to offer. . . . [O'Nan] conveys this through a sprawling, generously written saga that imparts exceptional insights into the human heart." --Rob Stout, The Charlotte Observer

"O'Nan's carefully detailed narrative results in rich character studies." --Nancy Pate, The Orlando Sentinel

"[An] affectionate, resonant book. . . . Wish You Were Here reminds the reader of the petty jealousies and deep wounds, the faults and the forgiveness, the prejudices and the trust that make families so alike--and in their precise details, so different." --Tara Burghart, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette

"An elegy for a lost father, a lost past, and for lost dreams. . . . With deft sympathy, O'Nan chronicles the reactions of nine family members. . . . the nature of families, the nature of life, and [his] exquisitely ordinary portrait is tantamount to a sparkling epiphany." --Mary A. McCay, The New Orleans Times-Picayune

"The tableau of daily life is expertly painted, and O'Nan takes time with his story, drawing the reader into a world created with unwavering confidence. . . . For this author of seemingly limitless scope, perhaps this novel will prove to be O'Nan's 'breakout book.'" --Irina Reyn, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"It's hard not to admire O'Nan's earnestness and his compassion for his characters."

About the Author

STEWART O'NAN is the author of numerous books, including Wish You Were Here, Everyday People, In the Walled City, The Speed Queen, and Emily, Alone. His 2007 novel, Last Night at the Lobster, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his family.