The Full Catastrophe - Hardcover

David Carkeet is the author of five novels, including three New York Times Notable Books. His honors include an Edgar nomination, an O. Henry Award, an NEA Fellowship, and the AWP Creative Nonfiction Award. He lived in St. Louis for thirty years with his wife and three daughters. He currently lives in Worcester, Vermont.

Flaky, amiable Jeremy Cook, the linguist Carkeet introduced in Double Negative , leaves the ivied halls of academe for the closer confines of a suburban home in this wrenching yet often exhilarating examination of a troubled modern marriage. When the Wabash Institute in Indiana folds for lack of funding, Jeremy slips into a job in Saint Louis, Mo., with the Pillow Agency, a zany marriage-counseling service. His assignment is to move in with Beth and Dan Wilson and, by observing their interactions, help them decide if their marriage can be saved. Jeremy insinuates himself into the Wilsons' daily activities. His relationship with the couple and their game 10-year-old Robbie is at once intimate and distant, definitely a seat-of-the-pants proposition, but his training as a linguist serves him, and probably the Wilsons, well. Carkeet's premise is fresh, his characters utterly winning and his comic observations full of affection for those caught up in the complex confusions of love. Laugh-out-loud scenes and swift, convincing dialogue mark this lunatic look at serious issues; the conclusion may be irresolute, but all the more believable for that. Literary Guild alternate.
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