Book Review - The Astral

Kate Christensen's new novel The Astral (2011) is my most recent fiction book (not that there have been many recently...). I picked this up when cruising a book store on the strength of having really liked her 2008 PEN/Faulkner award winning novel The Great Man. It didn't disappoint.

The Astral is the story of Harry Quirk, an aging poet who is thrown out of his apartment by his wife of many years. As Harry tries to come to terms with the end of his marriage, he is also dealing with understanding his daughter who is now openly gay, and his son who has joined a cult. Over the course of the novel we get to see Harry struggle to understand what his life has become. This is not a happy story, but it does feel real, and true.

"This should have struck me as ominous, I now suppose, but I was so smitten, I found myself charmed by her frank, untrammeled need for control. This insistence on doing what she wanted would play itself out in ten thousand ways over the next three decades plus. I always capitulated to it. In fact I craved it." [p. 56]

4 stars out of 5.

Books read in 2011: 2 (Yikes!!!)
Published in 2011: 1 (this)
NewAuthors: 1
Classics: none

Next up... more history. I feel like Crusades...