The Award - by Matthew Pearl (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"The Award begins as a wryly funny satire of thwarted literary ambition, but it quickly evolves into something darker and more disturbing. Matthew Pearl's addictive and propulsive novel has the twisted nightmare logic of a Patricia Highsmith thriller."--Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Tracy Flick Can't Win and Mrs. Fletcher

The author of Save Our Souls and The Dante Club makes his eagerly awaited return to fiction with this irreverent and propulsive novel about a young writer trying to make his way through a cutthroat literary scene that turns deadly.

David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner.

He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him.

Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book.

Suddenly Silas is interested--if intensely spiteful.

But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices.

Fate intervenes--with shocking consequences. . . .

With the wit and psychological wisdom of The Plot and The Winner, The Award is a timely, razor-sharp, and unputdownable novel about writing groups, publishing, ambition, human foibles, and the dangerous things we will do to get ahead.

Review Quotes

"The Award begins as a wryly funny satire of thwarted literary ambition, but it quickly evolves into something darker and more disturbing. Matthew Pearl's addictive and propulsive novel has the twisted nightmare logic of a Patricia Highsmith thriller."
-- Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Tracy Flick Can't Win and Mrs. Fletcher

"You are a castaway on a coral atoll, and you find a Man Friday--only he turns out to be a convicted murderer--oh, what a story! Matthew Pearl tells it, this dark tale of the 1887 wreck of the Wandering Minstrel with flair and aplomb: transfixingly brilliant." -- Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of Knowing What We Know, on Save Our Souls

"Save Our Souls is a story, not a study. The distinction is vital. You get to know these people and their relationships with each other. You live and die with every near-rescue that isn't. Most important, you keep turning the page." -- Boston Globe on Save Our Souls

"A fascinating picture of frontier Kentucky. . . . The story of Jemima's abduction, an exciting and revealing episode in the history of America's westward expansion, deserves to be retold. To his credit, Pearl resists oversimplifying a history that has been too often presented as a frontier romance, showing us that it is as much about the women, children and Native Americans who played a part in it as the famous men who ensured it would be remembered." -- New York Times Book Review on The Taking of Jemima Boone

"Not only did Matthew Pearl's clear and vivid writing immediately sweep me up in a father's fear, it pulled me into a larger and even more profound story, one that would change the course of three nations--one young, two ancient, all fighting for survival." -- Candice Millard, bestselling author of The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, on The Taking of Jemima Boone

"It seemed Jemima Boone's fate to be taken hostage--if not by Kentucky Indians then by fiction and legend. Even a cousin had a go at her story, in verse. Sensitively and eloquently, writing his way around the silences, Matthew Pearl rescues her at last. Fearlessness seemed to run in the family; Jemima could neither read nor write, yet had an uncanny ability to communicate with her father, conspiring with him from a distance, assisting with his rescue, under gunfire, at close hand. A rousing tale of frontier daring and ingenuity, better than legend on every front."
-- Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, on The Taking of Jemima Boone