About this item
Highlights
- It is the autumn of 1999.
- Discover Great New Writers (Fiction) 2011 1st Winner
- About the Author: Scott O'Connor was born and raised in Syracuse, New York, and currently lives in Los Angeles.
- 384 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
Book Synopsis
It is the autumn of 1999. A year has passed since Lucy Darby's unexpected death, leaving her husband David and son Whitley to mend the gaping hole in their lives. David, a trauma-site cleanup technician, spends his nights expunging the violent remains of strangers, helping their families to move on, though he is unable to do the same. Whitley--an 11-year-old social pariah known simply as The Kid--hasn't spoken since his mother's death. Instead, he communicates through a growing collection of notebooks, living in a safer world of his own silent imagining.
As the impending arrival of Y2K casts a shadow of uncertainty around them, their own precarious reality begins to implode. Questions pertaining to the events of Lucy's death begin to haunt David, while The Kid, who still believes his mother is alive, enlists the help of his small group of misfit friends to bring her back. As David continues to lose his grip on reality and The Kid's sense of urgency grows, they begin to uncover truths that will force them to confront their deepest fears about each other and the wounded family they are trying desperately to save.
Review Quotes
Scott O'Connor speaks softly and somehow manages to make something beautiful of unspeakable matters...a voice so insistently stirring, you want to lean in close to catch every word. --The New York Times Book Review O'Connor's prose is as beautifully terse as his plot...squeezing the reader's emotions so that when the myth of the perfect family begins to dissolve...it feels like the inevitable waking from a halcyon dream. --Booklist Astonishing...Introducing an amazing new talent to the world of fiction. --Library Journal (Starred Review) Heartfelt...the story is involving and moves easily through material that could smother with treacle, but O'Connor's strong characters--especially the Kid, whose elementary school humiliations are especially well handled--and his ease with conveying their emotions keeps the novel afloat. -- Publishers Weekly There are no easy answers or safe archetypes here, nor is there a single iota of sugar-coating. The world of Scott O'Connor's debut novel is tough, worn, and thoroughly lived in, and is as vivid and painfully honest as anything I've read in a very long time. Do not sleep on Untouchable, this is the real thing. --Nathan Singer, author of A Prayer for Dawn and In the Light of You Once in a very long time, a book comes along that resonates and sings with heart. It's characters so real you want to touch them, hug them. Their peril so well told you are filled with fear as you are a mere observer of their adventure. You find yourself holding your breath as you read the last pages of the story for all could be lost or won in the confines of this bound paper. And when it is over you wish you could read it all for the first time, again. That is how good this book is. --Crimespree magazine
About the Author
Scott O'Connor was born and raised in Syracuse, New York, and currently lives in Los Angeles. His 2004 novella Among Wolves was praised by the Los Angeles Times Book Review for its "crisp, take-no-prisoners style" and hailed the author as "one to watch."