The Breaks - by Richard Price (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the author of Clockers and Lush Life comes this "glorious, gritty comedy" (The New Yorker) Richard Price's The Breaks.

Peter Keller, first college grad from a working-class Yonkers family, thought he was on the road to success. Until no law school wanted him. As he watches his friends advance into promising careers, he jumps from job to job---mail clerk, phone solicitor, stand-up comic---until he breaks down and starts phoning in bomb threats on his own house. He's going to have to work hard to change the pattern of self-sabotage that has defined most of his life. And taking that job at his alma mater as a teacher of freshman comp and starting an affair with a violently psychotic ex-wife of a colleague probably won't help matters. Richard Price's brilliant comic novel is a classic tale of a young man trying to find his place in the world.

Review Quotes

"A glorious, gritty comedy." --The New Yorker

"Richard Price is to fiction what Martin Scorsese is to film....He has a genuine gift; his style is energetic, his eye for catching the minutiae of pop culture is keen, he swings to the jangling rhythms of city life." --The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Richard Price is the author of seven novels, including Lush Life, Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan. He wrote the screenplays for the films Sea of Love, Ransom, and The Color of Money, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He won the 2007 Edgar Award for Best TV writing as a co-writer for the HBO series The Wire. Price was also awarded a Literature Award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York City.