Colossus

Praise for Colossus

“Barkan is reaching back to the past, to a traditional kind of novel, one much closer to Richard Ford and John Updike … We are seduced as readers by Teddy Starr, enough to find him sympathetic, relatable, a victim, which I don’t think Ross Barkan cares about as much as is he interesting? And yes, he is.” –Bret Easton Ellis

“Colossus earns its grand title… Family secrets are nothing new to family saga novels, but I don’t think I’ve ever read one with such diabolical ingenuity.”–Hugh Blanton, Quadrant Magazine

“A canny, twisty satire of all-American posturing.”–Kirkus Reviews

“Barkan has written a challenging portrait of a thoroughly modern man. With the rigorous detail familiar to readers of Ben Lerner, he explores how far Teddy will go to renounce his past.”–Library Journal

“In his new novel Colossus, Ross Barkan brings his readers into the troubled headspace of a Michigan pastor… all characteristics that make for memorable fiction.”–Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“The slick, rich, right-wing pastor Teddy Starr is a charismatic confidence man in the American vein (part Elmer Gantry, part Jay Gatsby, part Donald Trump). As fast talking as he is, as amoral as he is, Barkan gives him a fascinating, complex inner life. This thrilling novel skewers the cynicism of our current moment, but it also strikingly renders the human drama of fathers and sons, the tension between legacy and possibility.”–Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward

“Ross Barkan’s Colossus begins firmly inside the troubled pastoral sublime of John Updike and Richard Ford, but it’s a feint–or a partial feint. What Barkan has in mind is something far more expansive: a broad interrogation of the American psyche in its myriad conflicting parts. The result is masterful, as thrillingly devious–and as brilliantly controlled–as Philip Roth’s The Counterlife.”–Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood

“Teddy Starr is a compelling protagonist, referencing biblical passages and brand names with equal fluency, as if Patrick Bateman went to Catholic camp. Teddy’s story is the foundation of Colossus, but the book builds a layered narrative about the structures we all create to shape and contain our lives.” –Chicago Review of Books

“Barkan is a master of building suspense. His previous novel had me turning page after page to get to the climax, but Colossus gripped my attention even more–to the point that I couldn’t help but continue reading as I walked from the subway onto the street, deterred neither by the raindrops ruining the book’s pages nor the pedestrians glaring at me. Indeed, there’s something about reading a Ross Barkan novel while riding the subway–or walking the streets–in New York that adds to the effect of the plot. In a globalized, increasingly artificial world where affection for place is no longer in fashion–and in some cases is deemed deplorable–his love for the city is refreshingly real.” –Compact

Praise for Ross Barkan

“Barkan’s ear for speech is impec-ca-ble; pages-long con-ver-sa-tions float by, with a pal-pa-ble rhythm and a clear, con-sis-tent voice.”–Benjamin Selesnick, Jewish Book Council

“A smart, stylish and original New York novel. Barkan knows the city inside and out, and Glass Century evokes the New York of the 70s as well as any recent work of fiction I can think of while also centering a powerful, decades-long love story that is as complex and believable as it is ultimately moving.”–Adelle Waldman

“Tennis and love and the city, and the insatiable fire that is history. Glass Century has it all. Barkan’s novel is both a marvelous paean to NYC and a spectacularly moving novel.”–Junot Díaz

“Glass Century is old-fashioned in a good way, moving storytelling in the classic social realist style about the only taboo kink left, adultery.”–Nell Zink

“The soundtrack to Ross Barkan’s new novel should be a wailing siren. Glass Century keeps pace with an anxious and changing New York as it tracks its protagonists from the Fear City day of the early seventies through September 11 and onward to the trauma of COVID-19. Generous and funny, this smart, expansive book kept me utterly engrossed.”–Christopher Sorrentino

“You won’t be able to put it down. Ross Barkan captures ‘the drift of time away from wherever you used to be.’ You are all the characters, each scene engrossing as quicksand, sucking you in. It starts like an inverse Taming of the Shrew (you nearly plotz with laughing) and transforms into a profound meditation on marriage, tennis, family, politics and the vicissitudes of life. Glass Century, with its two main characters, Mona Glass and Saul Plotz, mirrors the monumental twin towers that loom in the novel: ‘the ocean of dark sky pressed against the long, thick glass.’”–Jill Hoffman

“Barkan ambitiously reconciles the restlessness and enormity of the last half century without succumbing to the pretense and superficiality of idealism or relatability. This alone is a feat, but by its end, we have become the empire and the empire has become us.”–Zain Khalid

Ross Barkan is the author of five books, including the novel Glass Century. He’s a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, a columnist for New York Magazine, and the editor-in-chief of The Metropolitan Review, a books and culture review publication.

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