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The Unprofessionals: A Novel
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The Unprofessionals: A Novel Like new - 2008

by Julie Hecht

  • Used
  • Paperback

Hecht's first novel revisits the batty, obsessive narrator of her short-story collection "Do the Windows Open?" and chronicles the strange friendship between a photographer in her late 40s and a young man whom she has known since his childhood.

Description

There is no American writer alive who is funnier, more inquisitive, or more surprising than Julie Hecht. The Unprofessionals, her first novel, whose narrator also told the stories in the author's bestselling collection Do the Windows Open?, is a triumph of tragicomedy. The book follows the odd friendship between the narrator -- a photographer in her late forties -- and a precocious raconteur, identified only as The Boy, whom she has known since his childhood. As the narrator and the young man regale each other with tales of the way Americans live now, she is also telling the story of his path to heroin addiction and his many attempts to recover. The Unprofessionals is a masterpiece of comic despair, illuminating our bewildering century, and a hilarious and sad story of two outsiders who see the world with painful clarity -- and as a whole, a novel of unexampled originality. Julie Hecht is the author of Do the Windows Open?, Was This Man a Genius?: Talks with Andy Kaufman, and The Unprofessionals. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker and Harper's. She has won an O. Henry Prize and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives on the east end of Long Island in winter and in Massachusetts in summer and fall. She has been writing stories since she was eight years old.
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Details

  • Title The Unprofessionals: A Novel
  • Author Julie Hecht
  • Binding Like new
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 240
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (August 12, 2008), New York
  • Date 2008-08-12
  • Features Price on Product - Canadian, Table of Contents
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 316162258
  • ISBN 9781416564270 / 1416564276
  • Weight 0.51 lbs (0.23 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.42 x 6.3 x 0.66 in (21.39 x 16.00 x 1.68 cm)
  • Themes
    • Topical: Friendship
  • Library of Congress subjects Psychological fiction, Friendship
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2008023657
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

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From the jacket flap

There is no American writer alive who is funnier, more inquisitive, or more surprising than Julie Hecht. The Unprofessionals, her first novel, whose nameless narrator also told the stories in the author's bestselling collection, Do the Windows Open?, is a mordant triumph. It follows the friendship between the narrator--a photographer in her late forties--and a young man whom she has known since his childhood and who has always shared the narrator's dismay about the way Americans live now: our discount chain stores, our incomprehensible architecture, our preoccupation with pets, our lack of manners. As the narrator takes us through the various stages of this friendship, she also tells the story of the young man's incongruous predicament on his path to heroin addiction and the absurdities of his attempted recovery. The Unprofessionals is in part a masterpiece of comic despair, in part an illumination of the customs and mores of a new and bewildering century, in part a hilarious and sad story of two outsiders who see the world with painful clarity--and, as a whole, a novel of unexampled originality.

Media reviews

Citations

  • New York Times Book Review, 09/07/2008, Page 24

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