A Calling for Charlie Barnes

A hilarious skewering of the American Dream by the man who must be the funniest writer we have

– Sathnam Sanghera * Guardian, Best Books of 2021 *This is a fine American novel about family, love, and a decent but flawed man trying to be better. In dark times like these, I can’t recommend this book too highly – Stephen KingSplendid … it is hard to be genuinely funny in a novel but the final 50 or so pages, in which Charlie’s family confront Jake Barnes, the fourth wall-breaking narrator of the novel, over the content of the tell-all memoir, was easily the most hilarious chapter of a novel I read all year – Martin Chilton * Independent, 20 Best Books of 2021 *Until I read A Calling For Charlie Barnes, Joshua Ferris’s virtuosic third novel, I couldn’t recall the last time a book caused me to both laugh and gasp aloud. Madly funny and bristling with intelligence, this is the story of a man in later life wallowing in the detritus of the American Dream and of the children witnessing his decline – Megan Nolan * New Statesman, Books of the Year *Simultaneously narratively courageous and utterly hilarious … where it leaves the reader feels special and unique * Sunday Times *In Ferris’s admirably risk-taking hands, this novel becomes so much more than simply another story of failed American dreams. Ferris has made himself into the leading writer of the American workplace … He understands both its absurdities (and this is another very funny book) and its rewards, but most of all he understands how it shapes modern America * Observer *Ferris could write enthralling realist fiction in his sleep but it’s the ideas and formal ingenuity that really set this novel apart … [he considers] the role of storytelling in families, the myths we create and the possibility that there is no such thing as telling it straight * i *Brilliant, funny, heartbreaking … Family, memory, ambition and death, all told with dervishing glee. Not just a daredevil of a novel, but something truly new – Andrew Sean Greer, author of LessFerris is on his finest deadpan form here, skewering contemporary America and the shallow values it embodied in the heat of the 2008 financial crash * Spectator *Inventive and witty, tender and wise. It’s a portrait of life, love and death, and much else besides * Daily Mail *