Wonderkid: A Novel
Feb 2014 · ABRAMS
Ebook
352
Pages
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About this ebook
A “hilarious” novel of a rock and roll dream gone awry (The New York Times Book Review).
The Wonderkids are living the dream: sold-out concerts, screaming fans, TV shows, number-one hits. Unfortunately, it’s because the lead singer, Blake Lear, made a deal—wild success in exchange for transforming the band into a children’s entertainment act. Now the seats are packed with grade schoolers instead of cool hipsters, and the television appearances happen on Saturday morning. But hey, rock and roll has always been for the kids, right?
The money is good, and things go very right—until they go very wrong. The temptations of the road are many, and the Wonderkids are big kids, too. Narrated by a boy whom Blake adopts on a whim, who becomes the band’s disciple, merch guy, amateur psychologist, and—eventually—damage control guru, Wonderkid is a delirious and surprisingly touching novel of the dangers of compromise, thwarted ambition, and fathers and sons, told with tremendous humor and energy.
“If Stace’s latest novel, his fourth, rings true, it’s because he is writing what he knows. For 25 years, he performed smart indie rock under the pseudonym John Wesley Harding . . . A great rock ’n’ roll novel.” —The Boston Globe
“Deliciously entertaining.” —The Wall Street Journal
“[Wonderkid is] sweet and funny and knowing—and this is me, holding up my lighter for more.” —Joshua Ferris, National Book Award finalist and author of Then We Came to the End
The Wonderkids are living the dream: sold-out concerts, screaming fans, TV shows, number-one hits. Unfortunately, it’s because the lead singer, Blake Lear, made a deal—wild success in exchange for transforming the band into a children’s entertainment act. Now the seats are packed with grade schoolers instead of cool hipsters, and the television appearances happen on Saturday morning. But hey, rock and roll has always been for the kids, right?
The money is good, and things go very right—until they go very wrong. The temptations of the road are many, and the Wonderkids are big kids, too. Narrated by a boy whom Blake adopts on a whim, who becomes the band’s disciple, merch guy, amateur psychologist, and—eventually—damage control guru, Wonderkid is a delirious and surprisingly touching novel of the dangers of compromise, thwarted ambition, and fathers and sons, told with tremendous humor and energy.
“If Stace’s latest novel, his fourth, rings true, it’s because he is writing what he knows. For 25 years, he performed smart indie rock under the pseudonym John Wesley Harding . . . A great rock ’n’ roll novel.” —The Boston Globe
“Deliciously entertaining.” —The Wall Street Journal
“[Wonderkid is] sweet and funny and knowing—and this is me, holding up my lighter for more.” —Joshua Ferris, National Book Award finalist and author of Then We Came to the End
About the author
Wesley Stace is the author of three widely acclaimed novels: Misfortune, selected by the Washington Post and Amazon as one of the best novels of the year; By George, one of the New York Public Library's 2007 Books To Remember; and Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer, one of the Wall Street Journal's best fiction books of 2011. He has released fifteen albums under the name John Wesley Harding and has appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Late Show with David Letterman, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He is the founder of the Cabinet of Wonders variety show, which has featured appearances by Rosanne Cash, Colson Whitehead, and Joshua Ferris, among many others, and which can be heard on NPR. He contributes frequently to the New York Times and lives in Philadelphia.
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