MATTHEW THOMAS

LONGLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARDA stunning, heartbreaking debut We Are Not Ourselves is both the intimate story of a family and an epic of the American Century.The product of a stormy upbringing in an Irish Catholic enclave of New York City, Eileen craves stability. Coming of age in the early Sixties, she meets and marries a young scientist named Edmund Leary.But while Eileen wants more for her family, Ed wont give up teaching for a better-paid job. Inadvertently Eileen starts to climb her own career ladder in nursing. She pushes Ed into finding a new home, but it becomes clear that his resistance is part of a deeply troubling psychological shift.In this masterful debut, Matthew Thomas paints a sprawling, profoundly sympathetic portrait of a family coping with slow-burning tragedy. We Are Not Ourselves is a grand testament to our deepest hopes and most human frailties.

NOVELA DE FICCION LITERARIA

FINALISTA DEL PREMIO "THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE" SELECCIONADO PARA EL "GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD" NOMINADO PARA EL "FOLIO PRIZE" NOMBRADO "LIBRO DESTACADO DE EL AÑO" POR THE NEW YORK TIMES Un brillante y sobrecogedor debut es a la vez una historia intima familiar y una vision epica del siglo americano

he instant "New York Times" bestseller "The" "Washington Post" calls a "stunning...superbly rendered" novel, and "Entertainment Weekly" describes as "a gripping family saga, maybe the best...since "The Corrections."" Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on how much alcohol has been consumed. From an early age, Eileen wished that she lived somewhere else. She sets her sights on upper class Bronxville, New York, and an American Dream is born. Driven by this longing, Eileen places her stock and love in Ed Leary, a handsome young scientist, and with him begins a family. Over the years Eileen encourages her husband to want more: a better job, better friends, a better house. It slowly becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper, more incomprehensive psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son Connell try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known, and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future. Described by "The New York Times Book Review" as "A long, gorgeous epic, full of love and caring...one of the best novels you'll read this year," "We Are Not Ourselves "is a testament to our greatest desires and our greatest frailties.Through the lives of these characters, Thomas charts the story of the American Century. The result is, "stunning...The joys of this book are the joys of any classic work of literature--for that is what this is destined to become--superbly rendered small moments that capture both an individual life and the universality of that person's experience" ("The Washington Post").