Out now! The World is a Narrow Bridge. Get it at Indiebound, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble
"'Why is the world the way it is, and how can we accept it?' This is the question at the center of Aaron Thier's hilarious, absurd, and cosmically-attuned new novel. Along the way he invents a genre of his own: the American magic-realist road trip." - Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs
"Thier has written a book for our particular moment in American history, and it's a testament to his amazing talent that he can pull the wreckage towards something beautiful... A wild, humane novel." - Kevin Wilson, author of Perfect Little World
"A book that looks at existence with equal measures of fear, humility and gratitude. In a time when novelists tend to be more concerned with psychology than the soul, that makes it a rare and valuable thing." - Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"'Why is the world the way it is, and how can we accept it?' This is the question at the center of Aaron Thier's hilarious, absurd, and cosmically-attuned new novel. Along the way he invents a genre of his own: the American magic-realist road trip." - Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs
"Thier has written a book for our particular moment in American history, and it's a testament to his amazing talent that he can pull the wreckage towards something beautiful... A wild, humane novel." - Kevin Wilson, author of Perfect Little World
"A book that looks at existence with equal measures of fear, humility and gratitude. In a time when novelists tend to be more concerned with psychology than the soul, that makes it a rare and valuable thing." - Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Eternity is out in paperback! Get it on IndieBound, or Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, or at your local independent bookstore…
“[A] sharp, inventive and compassionate novel . . . to be savored and heeded.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“Mr. Thier’s dizzying time-travels will inevitably call to mind David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and the danger of such books is that they tend to grow solemn and sanctimonious as they peer into the future. Happily, Mr. Eternity remains playful even as it relates catastrophe.” – The Wall Street Journal
“With symbolism and analogy, surrealism and fantasy, Thier deftly reflects on and explores the human condition through ‘the lavender light and sweet scented dust of history.’ Erudite. Imaginative. A work to be read slowly and savored.” – starred review, Kirkus Reviews
“Thier uses his deathless protagonist to chart the rise and fall of the American empire, and also those certainties… that afflict every age . . . The moral imagination behind Defoe’s adventures rivals that of his namesake, begging comparison to the best literature has to offer.” – Publishers Weekly
“Thier’s story lines entwine in Faulknerian brilliance . . . An enchanting, humorous, and visionary experience.” – Booklist
“Only a writer as wickedly smart as Aaron Thier would think to write such a twisted and wild story about Florida and climate change and time-battered Daniel Defoe; only Aaron Thier could pull it all off with such aplomb and in such gleeful and spiny language. Mr. Eternity will be sizzling in my brain for a long time.” – Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
“The end of the world has never been so much fun as in Aaron Thier’s brilliant cavalcade of a novel. Careening back- and forward while staying peacefully centered, offering absurdities and heartbreaks in equal measure, Mr. Eternity is a moving exploration of our past, present, and future discombobulations.” – Daniel Handler, author of Why We Broke Up and We are Pirates
“Aaron Thier’s MR. ETERNITY is shrewd, smart, and funny.” – Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction
“The combination of vivid inventiveness at the sentence level and wide-ranging vistas across the centuries makes this novel a joy to read. Daniel Defoe himself would have loved this book.” – Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Mars Trilogy
“[A] sharp, inventive and compassionate novel . . . to be savored and heeded.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“Mr. Thier’s dizzying time-travels will inevitably call to mind David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and the danger of such books is that they tend to grow solemn and sanctimonious as they peer into the future. Happily, Mr. Eternity remains playful even as it relates catastrophe.” – The Wall Street Journal
“With symbolism and analogy, surrealism and fantasy, Thier deftly reflects on and explores the human condition through ‘the lavender light and sweet scented dust of history.’ Erudite. Imaginative. A work to be read slowly and savored.” – starred review, Kirkus Reviews
“Thier uses his deathless protagonist to chart the rise and fall of the American empire, and also those certainties… that afflict every age . . . The moral imagination behind Defoe’s adventures rivals that of his namesake, begging comparison to the best literature has to offer.” – Publishers Weekly
“Thier’s story lines entwine in Faulknerian brilliance . . . An enchanting, humorous, and visionary experience.” – Booklist
“Only a writer as wickedly smart as Aaron Thier would think to write such a twisted and wild story about Florida and climate change and time-battered Daniel Defoe; only Aaron Thier could pull it all off with such aplomb and in such gleeful and spiny language. Mr. Eternity will be sizzling in my brain for a long time.” – Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
“The end of the world has never been so much fun as in Aaron Thier’s brilliant cavalcade of a novel. Careening back- and forward while staying peacefully centered, offering absurdities and heartbreaks in equal measure, Mr. Eternity is a moving exploration of our past, present, and future discombobulations.” – Daniel Handler, author of Why We Broke Up and We are Pirates
“Aaron Thier’s MR. ETERNITY is shrewd, smart, and funny.” – Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction
“The combination of vivid inventiveness at the sentence level and wide-ranging vistas across the centuries makes this novel a joy to read. Daniel Defoe himself would have loved this book.” – Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Mars Trilogy
And also: THE GHOST APPLE. Get it now on IndieBound, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble
At the turn of the eighteenth century, John Morehead Tripoli is marooned on the unspoiled Caribbean island of St. Renard. There, he lives for an idyllic year in a community of Carawak Indians.
Three hundred years later, the Carawak are gone, St. Renard is carpeted with banana plantations and sugarcane fields, and Tripoli himself is remembered only through his grandson, founder of New Hampshire’s Tripoli College, which maintains a branch campus on the island. The college, never prosperous, has been forced to enter into a coercive financial relationship with snack food giant Big Anna® Brands, the same corporation that controls most of the land on St. Renard. Big Anna® deposes the college president, uses students and faculty as test subjects for a “dietary and mood additive” called Malpraxalin®, and hijacks the St. Renard campus for a “field studies” program.
At the heart of this twisted satire are two souls in transition. Bill Brees is a grandfatherly dean, “undercover” as a Tripoli freshman, and bemused by how things have changed since his undergrad days. Maggie Bell is an African-American student, startled into the realization that nothing really changes at all. When these unlikely friends both elect to spend their spring semesters in the Caribbean, they will see a side of Big Anna® even uglier than they could have imagined.
The Ghost Apple develops through a varied and colorful collection of documents, including tourism pamphlets, blog posts, slave narratives, and personal correspondence. Slowly these texts reveal the extent of Tripoli’s current crisis, and highlight those historical crises in the midst of which the college—and the nation—were founded.
Praise for The Ghost Apple:
“Antic, darkly funny, and – like all the best satire – deadly serious beneath its surface, this unusually inventive debut reads like a classic campus novel shredded, set on fire, and rebuilt by Jonathan Swift.” – Andrea Barrett, author of Archangel
“Through an insanely fun mixture of pseudo-historical letters, blog posts, emails, newsletters, advertisements, and even course listings, Thier takes readers on a dark tour of life at Tripoli College. [A] raucous adventure.” – Booklist
“A meditation on globalization, higher education, slavery, disease, and the addictive effects of all-you-can-eat pudding, this novel is at once lyrical and satirical, formally inventive and steeped in tradition. It is the sort of book that makes you laugh only until you realize how sharp its bite is.” – David Leavitt
“As deadpan as Donald Bathelme’s best work and as antic as John Barth’s, The Ghost Apple provides further compelling evidence, for those who still need it, about the ways in which our most cherished and trusted institutions always manage to facilitate the process of sending our world to hell in a hand basket. Aaron Thier is a smart and funny and passionate new voice.” – Jim Shepard, author of National Book Award finalist Like You’d Understand, Anyway
“An improbable laugh riot.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Had Donald Barthelme written Absalom, Absalom!, this is it.” – Padgett Powell
“This is a damn good novel. It’s patient, weird, fun and, most of all, smart. It had me from the first line.” — Percival Everett, author of I am not Sidney Poitier, and Percival Everett by Virgil Russell
“Loopy course descriptions, the minutiae of faculty meetings, blurbs from the school newspaper, et al., create a delicious texture and form the structure of the book…A droll comedy of modern manners, incisive without being angry, this satire within satire within satire will delight the right audience.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)
At the turn of the eighteenth century, John Morehead Tripoli is marooned on the unspoiled Caribbean island of St. Renard. There, he lives for an idyllic year in a community of Carawak Indians.
Three hundred years later, the Carawak are gone, St. Renard is carpeted with banana plantations and sugarcane fields, and Tripoli himself is remembered only through his grandson, founder of New Hampshire’s Tripoli College, which maintains a branch campus on the island. The college, never prosperous, has been forced to enter into a coercive financial relationship with snack food giant Big Anna® Brands, the same corporation that controls most of the land on St. Renard. Big Anna® deposes the college president, uses students and faculty as test subjects for a “dietary and mood additive” called Malpraxalin®, and hijacks the St. Renard campus for a “field studies” program.
At the heart of this twisted satire are two souls in transition. Bill Brees is a grandfatherly dean, “undercover” as a Tripoli freshman, and bemused by how things have changed since his undergrad days. Maggie Bell is an African-American student, startled into the realization that nothing really changes at all. When these unlikely friends both elect to spend their spring semesters in the Caribbean, they will see a side of Big Anna® even uglier than they could have imagined.
The Ghost Apple develops through a varied and colorful collection of documents, including tourism pamphlets, blog posts, slave narratives, and personal correspondence. Slowly these texts reveal the extent of Tripoli’s current crisis, and highlight those historical crises in the midst of which the college—and the nation—were founded.
Praise for The Ghost Apple:
“Antic, darkly funny, and – like all the best satire – deadly serious beneath its surface, this unusually inventive debut reads like a classic campus novel shredded, set on fire, and rebuilt by Jonathan Swift.” – Andrea Barrett, author of Archangel
“Through an insanely fun mixture of pseudo-historical letters, blog posts, emails, newsletters, advertisements, and even course listings, Thier takes readers on a dark tour of life at Tripoli College. [A] raucous adventure.” – Booklist
“A meditation on globalization, higher education, slavery, disease, and the addictive effects of all-you-can-eat pudding, this novel is at once lyrical and satirical, formally inventive and steeped in tradition. It is the sort of book that makes you laugh only until you realize how sharp its bite is.” – David Leavitt
“As deadpan as Donald Bathelme’s best work and as antic as John Barth’s, The Ghost Apple provides further compelling evidence, for those who still need it, about the ways in which our most cherished and trusted institutions always manage to facilitate the process of sending our world to hell in a hand basket. Aaron Thier is a smart and funny and passionate new voice.” – Jim Shepard, author of National Book Award finalist Like You’d Understand, Anyway
“An improbable laugh riot.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Had Donald Barthelme written Absalom, Absalom!, this is it.” – Padgett Powell
“This is a damn good novel. It’s patient, weird, fun and, most of all, smart. It had me from the first line.” — Percival Everett, author of I am not Sidney Poitier, and Percival Everett by Virgil Russell
“Loopy course descriptions, the minutiae of faculty meetings, blurbs from the school newspaper, et al., create a delicious texture and form the structure of the book…A droll comedy of modern manners, incisive without being angry, this satire within satire within satire will delight the right audience.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)