Two Guys from Verona: A Novel of Suburbia - Softcover

Kaplan, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802136230 ISBN 13: 9780802136237

Publisher: Grove Press, 1999

Synopsis

Highly acclaimed on its publication and selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year, Two Guys from Verona is a rare breed of novel, striking a powerful chord across the nation and making James Kaplan the unexpected voice of a generation. It's the fall of 1999 in the plush New Jersey suburbs, and Will and Joel are fortyish, friends since the second grade. Will is a successful, tired cardboard salesman with a mortgage, a pretty wife, and 2.2 kids. Joel lives with his moth and works at a sub shop. Joel's favorite pastime is cruising the dark streets in his rusted-out '74 Chevy, drinking whiskey from a brown paper bag. Will feels sorry for Joel. And Joel feels sorry for Will. But their twenty-fifth high school reunion will change both their lives in ways neither has dreamed of - one facing death, the other facing life for the first time. "A bittersweet elegy for what, not too long ago, looked like a spanking new American version of the promised land." - The New York Times Book Review

About this title

From the Back Cover:

It's the fall of 1999 in the plush New Jersey suburbs, and Will and Joel are fortyish, friends since the second grade. Will is a successful, tired cardboard salesman with a mortgage, a pretty wife, and 2.2 kids. Joel lives with his mother and works at a sub shop. Will feels sorry for Joel. And Joel feels sorry for Will. But their twenty-fifth high school reunion will change both their lives in ways neither has dreamed of-one facing death, the other facing life for the first time.

Written in lucid, trenchantly funny prose, Two Guys from Verona strips bare the cultural and moral universe of a suburb in our strange era.

"A bittersweet elegy for what, not too long ago, looked like a spanking new American version of the promised land."-The New York Times Book Review

"Two Guys from Verona may well emerge as The Great American Novel, or at any rate the great one at the turn of the millennium."-San Antonio Express News

"Kaplan's novel is a view of suburban life as David Lynch might imagine it: as banal as a mini-mall, yet seething with anxiety, eroticism and violence. Novels don't come any hipper than that."-The Baltimore Sun

"Like John Updike, James Kaplan knows the suburban doldrums of domestic tedium and the elaborate power games that pass for congenial male bonding in those towns."-The New York Observer

"Kaplan's marvelously supple and understated style . . . is the perfect vehicle for the suspense that charges this witty, sexy, and wise comedyof errors and correction."-Booklist (starred review)

James Kaplan sold his first short story to The New Yorker at twenty-three; he has been writing fiction, screenplays, and articles for over two decades. He is a contributing editor for New York magazine and TV Guide and a contributing writer for Premiere. He is also the author of the novel, Pearl's Progress.

About the Author:

James Kaplan is a contributing editor for New York magazine and TV Guide, and a contributing writer for Premier.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0802136230
• ISBN 13: 9780802136237
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352