Subtle Bodies - Hardcover

"Rush's exuberant, late-modern style feels as smooth and casual as freshly pressed khakis, but beneath it a sort of parasympathetic network courses with moral ambivalence. . . . In "Subtle Bodies," as in so much of his work, confronting the world returns Rush to his central question: What matters, in the end? That we do what we can is the author's refrain. Even if all we can do--all any two people can do--is form a country of our own, whose flag is love."--Michelle Orange, "Book Forum" "[Rush] attends so closely to his characters--their thoughts, words, beliefs, relationships--and landscapes--physical, social, political--that he brings them utterly alive, with often-exhilarating aptitude and insight."--Rebecca Steinitz, "The Boston Globe"" """"Norman Rush has suddenly become one of America's must-read novelists. He crept up on us, because his two previous novels, "Mating" and "Mortals, "were such enormous books that you could easily tell yourself that you'd read them next year. . . . Now "Subtle Bodies" has arrived, at just 256 dense, colloquial, inviting pages, and you're out of excuses."--Clancy Martin, "New York Observer " "Rush's defining gift might be his incredible awareness--about politics, about human nature, about the world--which he bestows upon his characters. . . . It makes the reader's lens of the world a little clearer, a little sharper. If you've never read Rush, . . . "Subtle Bodies" is a more than fine place to begin."--Jill Owens, "The Oregonian" "By turns, tragic, bittersweet, insightful and laugh-out-loud funny, with its numerous references to pop-culture, radical politics, obscure philosophy, and hysterical monkeyshines of obnoxious college kids: Kraftwerk lyrics one moment, 19th century Russian anarchist the next."--"The Frontier Psychologist" ""Subtle Bodies "seems--to paraphrase Virginia Woolf's description of "Middlemarch--"like one of the few novels written for grown-up people. . . . Rush's charact

Ned and Nina are trying to conceive, so when Ned jets off with no notice to the funeral of Douglas, a mysterious friend from his student days, Nina follows him so they can have sex on time. Douglas was the ringleader of a fellowship of chums at NYU and Nina is baffled by the extraordinary hold the group - and Douglas in particular - have on Ned. The novel explores the reconfiguring and reappraisal of the clique following Douglas's tragic death. Subtle Bodies asks why we make the friends we do, why we keep them and how we make sense of our personal histories. It is a wise, funny and keenly observed portrayal of shifting relationships and new truths emerging from old certainties. Like all of Rush's work it embodies the dictum 'fiction is truth told excessively and beautifully'. It is a warm-hearted and pitch-perfect master class in the art of the novel.