Garth Risk Hallberg, "A Field Guide To The North American Family"

Garth Risk Hallberg reads from "A Field Guide To The North American Family" at Politics and Prose on 12/3/2017.

Originally published in 2007, and now reissued with a new full-color design, Hallberg’s inventive literary debut is a collection of sixty-three vignettes, each illustrated by one of forty photographers. At one level, these episodes are interlinked stories narrating the fates of two Long Island families after an unexpected death. At another level, each two-page spread is a meditation on a different fact of life, from love and freedom to mortgages, sibling rivalry, and midlife crisis. Each is cross-referenced, and readers can make their own ways through this ingenious do-it-yourself maze of a book. Hallberg, one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists, made his name with City on Fire, his epic narrative of 1970s New York City.

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Produced by Tom Warren