Set in rural New Hampshire, the novel’s hero is Isaac Hooker, a half-deaf, half-blind, hugely fat and ambitious boy-genius and his struggle to fulfill his parents’ blighted dreams.
“Wonderfully vivid…A truly impressive novel.” –Michiko Kakutani, New York Times.
“Fernanda Eberstadt has given us a beautiful novel, as tough as New England in winter, alive with braided ideas and passions. The reader feels the characters’ thoughts, thinks their emotions and cheers with both admiration and gratitude: Here is a book for grownups to relish…This is a novel of education, then, as well as of humor, sexuality, sacrifice, generosity, appetites and art—the sort of education you might wish for your child, or yourself.” – Frederick Busch, Los Angeles Times.