Psychological, Literary, Psychological Thrillers 

On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie another chance at life and sets in motion this richly imagined, uproariously funny novel. Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families--the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire--as they make their way in modern England.  

Synopsis
An exquisite, blistering debut novel Three brothers tear their way through childhood— smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—hes Puerto Rican, shes white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times. Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful. Written in magical language with unforgettable images, this is a stunning exploration of the viscerally charged landscape of growing up, how deeply we are formed by our earliest bonds, and how we are ultimately propelled at escape velocity toward our futures.
Synopsis
A debut novel that is a brilliant exploration of a close, complicated family and the struggle between brotherhood and becoming an individual 


About the Author
JUSTIN TORRES is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and a recent Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He was the recipient of a Rolón Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, Tin House, and Glimmer Train. Among many other things, he has worked as a farmhand, a dog walker, a creative writing teacher, and a bookseller; he is now a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. 

Genre/Form: Domestic fiction
Fiction
Historical fiction
Material Type: Document, Fiction, Internet resource
Document Type: Book, Computer File, Internet Resource
All Authors / Contributors: Zadie Smith

ISBN: 0965031004 9780965031004 0375501851 9780375501852 0375703861 9780375703867 037550561X 9780375505614
OCLC Number: 42290640
Awards: Guardian First Book Award, 2000.
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, 2000.
Whitbread Award, 2000.
Description: 448 pages ; 24 cm.
Contents: [I.] Archie 1974, 1945. The peculiar second marriage of Archie Jones ; Teething trouble ; Two families ; Three coming ; The root canals of Alfred Archibald Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal --
[II.] Samad 1984, 1857. The temptation of Samad Iqbal ; Molars ; Mitosis ; Mutiny! ; The root canals of Mangal Pande --
[III.] Irie 1990, 1907. The miseducation of Irie Jones ; Canines: the ripping teeth ; The root canals of Hortense Bowden ; More English than the English ; Chalfenism versus Bowdenism --
[IV.] Magid, Millat, and Marcus 1992, 1999. The return of Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal ; Crisis talks and eleventh-hour tactics ; The end of history versus the last man ; The final space ; Of mice and memory.
Series Title: Book club kit.
Responsibility: Zadie Smith.