The Hundred Brothers: A Novel - Softcover

Donald Antrim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031266219X ISBN 13: 9780312662196

Publisher: Picador, 2011

Synopsis

With a New Introduction by Jonathan Franzen

There's Rob, Bob, Tom, Paul, Ralph, and Noah; Nick, Dennis, Bertram, Russell, and Virgil. The doctor, the documentary filmmaker, and the sculptor in burning steal; the eldest, the youngest, and the celebrated "perfect" brother, Benedict. In Donald Antrim's mordantly funny novel The Hundred Brothers, our narrator and his colossal fraternity of ninety-eight brothers (one couldn't make it) have assembled in the crumbling library of their family's estate for a little sinister fun. Executed with the invention and intelligence of Barthelme and Pynchon, Antrim's taxonomy of male specimens is in equal proportions disturbing and absurdly hilarious.

About this title

Review:

There are, as the title says, one hundred brothers in Donald Antrim's novel. This sprawling fraternity has gathered in the family library for a dinner and over the course of a few hours, the author serves up sibling rivalry, revelry, and mayhem in meticulous, unflappable style.

For the most part, The Hundred Brothers skates along on the strength of its comic ingenuity. Yet Antrim has some serious points to make about masculine pride, vanity, and terror--not by invoking them directly, but by inflating them to monstrous (and mirthful) proportions. And the narrator's comments about his rampaging kin often have a larger, melancholic resonance to them. Indeed, when he points out "the complexities of our interdependence and the sorry indignities that pass as currency between us in lieu of gentler tender," he might be talking about any family--even one in the single-digit range.

From the Back Cover:

"Line for line, Donald Antrim may be the best young male writer in America; his books . . . pack a vicious satiric punch." --Details

"The author's surreal vision is both imaginative and wholly his own. . . . A striking literary discovery." --Boston Globe

"Gloriously unhinged. . . . A slapstick tour through the realms . . . previously explored by Jung and Joseph Campbell." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A fiercely intelligent writer. . . . [This is] a bravura nightmare." --The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 031266219X
• ISBN 13: 9780312662196
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208