Christian Kiefer will be reading from his debut novel, The Infinite Tides (Bloomsbury USA) at Book Passage on July 7 at 4 pm. We are excited about this new novel. And, we are excited about this NorCal author, who also happens to be a gifted singer / songwriter. (NPR thinks so too.) It is an event you won't want to miss. Seriously. Here's why...
And here's why....
"Maybe the most beautiful subject in literature, when it is handled with grace and intelligence, is the realization and release of long denied grief. Christian Kiefer created astronaut Keith Corcoran to travel that galaxy of earthbound loss and regret, after one brief and glorious trip into orbit. The Infinite Tides is the most emotionally and syntactically sophisticated debut I have seen, possibly ever. Keith Corcoran's space walk is so powerfully rendered, it keeps showing up in my dreams."
— Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted
And here's why....
"The Infinite Tides takes as its subject an astronaut brought to earth by abandonment and bewilderment. His journey is into the unknown of common suburbia, which he inhabits like an alien, and in whose unfamiliar atmosphere he must be taught to survive. This is a subtle and moving novel, a re-entry and recovery story that eloquently inhabits the terrain of grief and endurance."
— Antonya Nelson, author of Bound
And here's why....
"With astronaut Keith Corcoran, Kiefer will take you on an awesome American life odyssey from the International Space Station down to the lower depths of suburbia. This is a breathtakingly beautiful and honest rendering of one man's massive life crisis. Part Space Oddity, part Revolutionary Road, this is a magnificently original novel.
There are moments in this book I will never forget."
— Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead
And here's why....
"Smart, lyrical, deeply moving. The central character, a NASA astronaut who has touched the stars, must come to earth, as we all must. What he finds down here beneath the heavens is dizzying
in its emotional complexity and pure aching beauty."
— T.C. Boyle, author of When the Killing’s Done
And here's why....
"This novel will break your heart and take your breath away."
— Ayelet Waldman, author of Red Hook Road
And here's why....
And here's why....
"An astute, impressive, and ambitious debut."
— Publishers Weekly
"[W]ith a shimmering lexicon of fractals, space travel, and physics as well as a piquantly metaphorical sense of place…Kiefer illuminates the nature of a mathematical mind, depicts a dire failure of familial empathy, and translates emotions into cosmic and algorithmic
phenomena of startling beauty and profound resonance."
— Booklist
