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Boomer1

A Novel

Daniel Torday

Picador

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ISBN10: 1250214777
ISBN13: 9781250214775

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352 Pages

$21.00

CA$28.50

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Bluegrass musician, former journalist and editor, and now Ph.D. in English, Mark Brumfeld has arrived at his thirties with significant debt and no steady prospects. His girlfriend Cassie—a punk bassist in an all-female band, who fled her Midwestern childhood for a new identity—finds work at a “new media” company. When Cassie refuses his marriage proposal, Mark leaves New York and returns to the basement of his childhood home in the Baltimore suburbs.

Desperate and humiliated, Mark begins to post a series of online video monologues that critique Baby Boomers and their powerful hold on the job market. But as his videos go viral, and while Cassie starts to build her career, Mark loses control of what he began—with consequences that ensnare them in a matter of national security.

Told through the perspectives of Mark, Cassie, and Mark’s mother, Julia, a child of the '60s whose life is more conventional than she ever imagined, Boomer1 is timely, suspenseful, and in every line alert to the siren song of endless opportunity that beckons and beguiles all of us.

Reviews

Praise for Boomer1

"Millennial sociopathy is a pathology coined in a fictional New York Times column in Boomer1, Daniel Torday’s wry third work of fiction . . . Set in 2011, the novel reimagines the Occupy movement as an explicitly intergenerational conflict: millennials hitting back at the profligacy of baby boomers in a campaign of 'domestic terrorism,' waged largely online and coalescing around one bitter, balding man whose mother still makes his sandwiches . . . [Boomer1] reads as contemporary satire with Shakespearean echoes."—Olivia Sudjic, The New York Times

"Torday’s Boomer1 is sure to pique defensive urges, which is part of the delicious frisson and too-close-for-comfort observations in this new book."—Jenni Laidman, Chicago Tribune

"Intergenerational warfare, sparked by the unforgiving economics of the new millennium, is a great premise for a novel. With Boomer1 Daniel Torday is clearly enjoying himself . . . Mr. Torday has written this book with verve . . . Boomer1 is a sharp, bright and often amusing snapshot of this unwieldy economic moment."—Emily Bobrow, The Wall Street Journal

"In a world where homemade pipe bombs make their way into the mailboxes of American political leaders and the mail rooms of progressive news outlets, Daniel Torday's new novel, Boomer1, is topical and relevant, indeed. With admirable dexterity and a sharp eye for detail, Torday takes readers into the collapsing life of Mark Blumfield, a thirtysomething magazine fact-checker who loses his job when ad agencies begin to abandon print media and hook their wagons to internet content providers . . . Boomer1's knowing take on identity politics and generational turmoil will make many people smile."—Chuck Bauerlein, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"[Boomer1] is a hilariously accurate critique of today’s me-obsessed, hyper-connected, ultrasensitive society."—Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle

"[An] excellent new novel by Daniel Torday . . . Torday's narrative moves like a Clapton solo, fast and sinuous and haunting. And his black-humor story unfolds as naturally as a rainstorm . . . Torday has one hand on the pulse of contemporary life and one hand throwing up a peace sign."—Corey Mesler, Memphis Flyer

"Boomer1 is a refreshingly (if at times devastatingly) uncanny, funny, and clever retelling of the events that made millennials mad . . . The ambivalence of digital history—which can be gamed despite its democratizing potential, and which can abet social inequality as much as it can attenuate it—is one of the book’s more interesting moral concerns . . . Torday’s book is eerily prescient of the America we’ve struggled to reckon with since Nov. 9, 2016, and all the more unsettling even in spite of its clever humor."—Niko Maragos, The Millions

"Torday is a singular American writer with a big heart and a real love for the world. He has the rare gift for writing dynamic action scenes while being genuinely funny."—George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo

"In this inventive, hilarious, and audacious book, Daniel Torday elucidates the deep ironies and ambivalences embedded in how we live now."—Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others and National Book Critics Circle Award winner

"Daniel Torday’s Boomer1 is a wild, wickedly funny, and deeply empathetic look at modern American culture and politics.”—Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment

Boomer1 channels the riotous insecurity and injustice of our contemporary America into a frightening, hilarious, and all-too-plausible societal bildungsroman. Edgy and humane, this novel is live music for our screened-off world.”—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

"Boomer1 is a doozy—a prescient, cathartic love letter to Gen X, a fond call to arms for Millennials. Daniel Torday has written this generational cusp with wisdom, style and sincerity."—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus

Reviews from Goodreads

BOOK EXCERPTS

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

CLAIRE STANKOWITCZ CHANGED HER NAME to Cassie Black at the beginning of her first year of college. It was the best decision she’d ever made. The most decisive she’d ever been, too. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her mom...

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About the author

Daniel Torday

DANIEL TORDAY is a two-time National Jewish Book Award recipient and winner of the 2017 Sami Rohr Choice Award for The Last Flight of Poxl West. Torday's work has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, The Paris Review Daily, Esquire, and Tin House, and has been honored in both the Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays series. He is the Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College. His other books include The Sensualist: A Novella and The Last Flight of Poxl West.

Erin Torday