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Product Details
Scribner, February 2010
Hardcover, 368 pages
ISBN-10: 0743270487
ISBN-13: 9780743270489
Description
Warren Ziller moved his family to Southern California in search of a charmed life, and to all appearances, he found it: a gated community not far from the beach, amid the affluent splendor of the 1980s. But the Zillers’ American dream is about to be rudely interrupted. Warren has squandered their savings on a bad real estate investment, which he conceals from his wife, Camille, who misreads his secrecy as a sign of an affair. Their children, Dustin, Lyle, and Jonas, have grown as distant as satellites, too busy with their own betrayals and rebellions to notice their parents’ distress. When tragedy strikes, the Zillers are forced to move to Warren’s abandoned housing development in the desert. In this comically bleak new home, each must reckon with what’s led them there and who’s to blame—and whether they can summon the forgiveness needed to hold the family together.
With penetrating insights into modern life and an uncanny eye for everyday absurdities, Eric Puchner delivers a wildly funny, heartbreaking, and thoroughly original portrait of an American family.
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"The only conclusion to come to after reading this novel is that Eric Puchner is a massive talent…Each character is perfectly drawn and deeply interesting. Go read this book."
-- McSweeney's
"Puchner's well-constructed tale of a house of pain built on a foundation of secrets echoes Updike and Easton Ellis."
-- People magazine, 4 stars
"Puchner is an extraordinarily talented writer... a master of mood and tone, able to make moments of pure hilarity follow heartbreak with the seamlessness of real life."
-- Boston Globe
“Reader, rejoice! Eric Puchner has given us a brilliant, unpretentious family saga of uncommon mastery and soul. Model Home is filled to bursting with wonderfully rendered love and heartbreak, hope and despair, triumph and travesty. Read this awesome novel. Read it now.”
— Elisa Albert, author of The Book of Dahlia
— Elisa Albert, author of The Book of Dahlia
“Model Home is a fantastic follow up to Eric Puchner's remarkable story collection, Music Through The Floor. Puchner is such a tremendously skilled writer you barely notice how deftly he slips between points of view, how he creates characters that are so real their yearnings and failures become your own. This is a heartbreaking yet consistently funny novel that wraps its arms around all the beauty and tragedy of the unfulfilled American dream.”
— Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries
— Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries
"Model Home is a fantastic follow-up to Eric Puchner's remarkable story collection, Music Through the Floor. Puchner is such a tremendously skilled writer, you barely notice how deftly he slips between points of view, how he creates characters that are so real their yearnings and failures become your own. This is a heartbreaking yet consistently funny novel that wraps its arms around all the beauty and tragedy of the unfulfilled American dream."
-- STEPHEN ELLIOTT, author of The Adderall Diaries
“Reader, rejoice! Eric Puchner has given us a brilliant, unpretentious family saga of uncommon mastery and soul. Model Home is filled to bursting with wonderfully rendered love and heartbreak, hope and despair, triumph and travesty. Read this awesome novel. Read it now.”
— Elisa Albert, author of The Book of Dahlia
— Elisa Albert, author of The Book of Dahlia
"Eric Puchner's Model Home is 1980s California in a nutshell: bright and frantic, giddy and broke, desperate and strong and always, always moving."
-- DANIEL HANDLER, author of Adverbs
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 18, 2010
...California professor Eric Puchner’s experiences in Oconomowoc and the Lake Country as a child surface in his novel “Model Home.” more photos California professor Eric Puchner’s experiences in Oconomowoc and the ...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 18, 2010
...Puchner and novel have ties to Oconomowoc enlarge photo California professor Eric Puchner’s experiences in Oconomowoc and the Lake Country as a child surface in his novel “Model Home.” more photos California professor Eric Puchner’s ...
Chicago Tribune, February 15, 2010
...which thanks to the fine talent of Erich Puchner I will remember for quite a long while. 'A Model Home' Simon and Schuster. $25.00, 362 pages. Alan Cheuse’s latest book is a collection of travel essays titled 'A Trance After Breakfast ...
Boston Globe, February 8, 2010
...Award-winning short-story writer Eric Puchner?s debut novel is about nothing less than the conflicts at the heart of American life: the pursuit of all too-often illusory prosperity and what happens when people in a culture that tells them ...
New York Times, January 20, 2010
...Eric Puchner is the author of a story collection, ?Music Through the Floor.? His first novel, ?Model Home,? will be published next month. My novel, ?Model Home,? is ...
Eric Puchner's Books
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Music Through the FloorIncludes a new story, "Body Language"! Now in paperback, Eric Puchner's celebrated debut collection, a finalist for the New York Public Library's...Read More
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