Rich Boy - Hardcover

Sharon Pomerantz is a graduate of the University of Michigan's M.F.A. program. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous journals, including The Missouri Review and Ploughshares. Her story "Ghost Knife" was included in The Best American Short Stories 2003, and "Shoes" was nationally broadcast on NPR's Selected Shorts. She currently teaches writing at the University of Michigan. This is her first novel.

"This debut novel does something quite rare. It manages to be both detailed and general-- to tell a single story and make of it a parable, to chart the rise and fall of a representative figure in 'the American century.' Sharon Pomerantz reminds us of a truth that fiction can embody: however bright the flame or dark the burn-out, however commercial the marriage or spectacular the fraud, there are human beings at risk. Her character of Robert Vishniak is the poor Rich Boy writ large."―Nicholas Delbanco, author of What Remains and The Vagabonds

"Very rarely, a writer comes along who understands the very rich, and those who are determined to become very rich. Think Fitzgerald and Gatsby, Bellow and Augie March, Wolfe and Bonfire of the Vanities. And now here comes Sharon Pomerantz, bringing to life in an utterly compelling and convincing way Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s, with all its avarice, ambition, snobbery, love, lust, and self-delusion. If you want to understand what made Bernie Madoff possible, I can think of no more serious, sensitive, and intelligent novel to read than Rich Boy."―Eileen Pollack author of In the Mouth, The Rabbi in the Attic, and Paradise, New York

"At once a panoramic portrayal of American life from the 60s to the 80s and an intimate study of one restless dreamer of the American dream, Rich Boy offers us a vivid examination of class - the sharp and subtle distinctions between both rich and poor, and rich and wealthy. Pomerantz's book is a noteworthy addition to that long and distinguished line of American fiction about money stretching from The Great Gatsby to The Bonfire of the Vanities."―Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl