Untouchable - Hardcover

O'Connor, Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 193556238X ISBN 13: 9781935562382

Publisher: Gallery Books, 2011

Synopsis

It is the autumn of 1999. A year has passed since Lucy Darby's sudden and unexpected death, leaving her husband David and son Whitley to mend the gaping hole in their lives. David, a trauma-site cleanup technician, spends his nights expunging the violent remains of strangers, helping their families to move on, though he is unable to do the same. Whitley - an 11 year-old social pariah known simply as The Kid - hasn't spoken since his mother's death. Instead, he communicates through a growing collection of notebooks, living in a safer world of his own silent imagining.
As the impending arrival of Y2K casts a shadow of uncertainty around them, their own precarious reality begins to implode. Questions pertaining to the events of Lucy's death begin to haunt David, while The Kid, who still believes his mother is alive, enlists the help of his small group of misfit friends to bring her back. As David continues to lose his grip on reality and The Kid's sense of urgency grows, they begin to uncover truths that will force them to confront their deepest fears about each other and the wounded family they are trying desperately to save.


Scott O'Connor lives in Los Angeles. His 2004 novella Among Wolves was praised by the Los Angeles Times Book Review for its "crisp, take-no-prisoner's style" and hailed the author as "one to watch."

About this title

About the Author:

Scott O’Connor is the author of the novella Among Wolves, and the novels Untouchable and Half World. He has been awarded the B&N Discover Great New Writers Award, and his stories have been shortlisted for The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and cited as Distinguished in Best American Short Stories. He has written for Fox and Universal Television, as well as The New York Times Magazine and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Review:

"Scott O'Connor speaks softly and somehow manages to make something beautiful of unspeakable matters...a voice so insistently stirring, you want to lean in close to catch every word." --The New York Times Book Review

"O'Connor's prose is as beautifully terse as his plot...squeezing the reader's emotions so that when the myth of the "perfect" family begins to dissolve...it feels like the inevitable waking from a halcyon dream."  --Booklist

"Astonishing...Introducing an amazing new talent to the world of fiction." --Library Journal (Starred Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 193556238X
• ISBN 13: 9781935562382
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384