Book description
>Top executive Frederick Breathwaite suspects his days might be
numbered, and is frantically trying to ensure a foothold on the career
ladder for his son Jes. Harald Jaeger, estranged from his wife and
daughters, harbours desperate passions for an alarming number of women
(including, dangerously, the Tank's married financial officer). Lost in
his amorous fantasies, he has somehow managed to catch the CEO's eye -
as a possible replacement for Breathwaite. Meanwhile the CEO's son Adam
should be following in his father's alpha-male footsteps but instead is
head-over-heels in puppy love with his
au pair
. And in a nearby shoe repair shop, Jes, who personally can't imagine
anything worse than his father's corporate life, is pursuing a very
different kind of future.
As the city settles into autumn,a season of brittle days and foreboding
nights, the impending downsizing causes a ripple effect that touches not
just every employee in the Tank but their spouses, children and lovers
as well. Sharp, funny but remarkably tender, Falling Sideways
is a shrewdly observed tale of ambition and anxiety, of backstabbing
and backsliding, of office politics and family affairs.> 'Falling
Sideways is that rarest of commodities in American literary fiction, a
novel about men and women at work; it is part satire and part drama, and
it is very smart' Washington Post 'Thomas has an ear and eye for modern
life. He knows how neighborhoods gentrify, how kids stay in lousy
apartments for "street cred"; he knows how women long for
children after their career has used up the time of their unquestioned
fertility, and most of all he knows Copenhagen' Minneapolis Star-Tribune
PRAISE FOR IN THE COMPANY OF ANGELS: 'Thomas E. Kennedy is an
astonishment, and In the Company of Angels is as elegant as it is
beautiful, as important as it is profound. A marvel of a read' Junot
Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 'The combination of
subtle, beautiful prose and searingly painful realities make In the
Company of Angels a story that lingers in the intellect as pervasively
as in the heart. An astonishing, wise novel of our times' Liz Jensen,
author of The Ninth Life of Louis Drax >Top executive Frederick
Breathwaite suspects his days might be numbered, and is frantically
trying to ensure a foothold on the career ladder for his son Jes. Harald
Jaeger, estranged from his wife and daughters, harbours desperate
passions for an alarming number of women (including, dangerously, the
Tank's married financial officer). Lost in his amorous fantasies, he has
somehow managed to catch the CEO's eye - as a possible replacement for
Breathwaite. Meanwhile the CEO's son Adam should be following in his
father's alpha-male footsteps but instead is head-over-heels in puppy
love with his au pair
. And in a nearby shoe repair shop, Jes, who personally can't imagine
anything worse than his father's corporate life, is pursuing a very
different kind of future.
As the city settles into autumn,a season of brittle days and foreboding
nights, the impending downsizing causes a ripple effect that touches not
just every employee in the Tank but their spouses, children and lovers
as well. Sharp, funny but remarkably tender, Falling Sideways
is a shrewdly observed tale of ambition and anxiety, of backstabbing
and backsliding, of office politics and family affairs.>
