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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Happy Babyby Stephen Elliott
AwardsA Salon Best Book of 2004
Staff Pick
I momentarily resisted reading Happy Baby simply (unreasonably) because of the J. T. LeRoy epigraph. LeRoy has since been outed as a particularly egregious literary fraud, and yet LeRoy's observation resonates deeply with me — was it Picasso who said that "art is a lie that makes us realize truth"? Happy Baby is an intelligent, engaging, sharply written novel that slides backward in time — into the brutality and heartbreak that childhood is for too many people. Review-a-Day (What is Review-a-Day?)"[T]his is an ambitious and carefully constructed literary novel at least as much as it is a gut-spilling memoir. It's easy to miss that; Elliott's style is terse and unvarnished, free of...high-flown, flowers-in-the-gutter lyricism....Happy Baby is a most impressive little novel, heartbreakingly and bewilderingly alive in a way most bigger books can't even imagine." Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review) Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Stephen Elliott's new novel, Happy Baby, explores how pain can define desire, how the future becomes the past, and how grace struggles with self-destruction. The story, told in reverse, begins with thirty-six-year-old Theo and his search for sexual and emotional freedom, and slowly unravels back to a childhood of abuse in the juvenile detention centers of Chicago. Without judgment, Elliott traces a life defined by yearning — for love, for pain, for certainty. His clear words and unflinching gaze reveal the difficulty of simple truths and the possibility of transcendence in the face of unforgivable crimes. Review:"From the very beginning [of Happy Baby] Theo possesses a fresh, intense,
confessional vulnerability unusual in male narrators, especially one whose
street smarts should have ruled it out long ago. It's a great question for
fiction: How, and whether, the capacity for empathy can be preserved in the
face of persistent brutality. Theo lives by his wits on that knife's edge
where sex meets violence. Stephen Elliott belongs to the lineage of
seemingly fearless, sexual truth-tellers that includes Genet and Duras, but
he's ours. He couldn't be more American. We should rejoice in having such
fearlessness among us." Elizabeth Tallent, author of Honey and Museum
Pieces Review:"Blending the edginess of Augusten Burroughs with the raw emotion of Marguerite Duras, this compelling confessional reveals a ravaged soul seeking solace and resolution in the wake of unspeakable crimes." Booklist Review:"[Elliott] clearly knows his subject...and infuses this prickly tale with a surprising sweetness." Publishers Weekly Review:"Grimly deterministic, but intermittently powerful." Kirkus Reviews Review:"Elliott tells a brutal tale in words of few syllables, in the flat voice of a zombied-out Joe Friday...simultaneously forensic and shrugging, the seen-it-all tone only serving to heighten the ghastliness of the subjects described." San Francisco Chronicle Review:"The novel's backward structure means that rather than building momentum, it offers the sense of a mystery being slowly solved. That the mystery of why Theo...turns out as he does is essentially unsolvable makes it no less satisfying, or, in Theo's case, less heartbreaking." Curtis Sittenfeld, The New York Times Book Review Synopsis:Happy Baby is the story of Theo, once an orphan in the Chicago foster care system and now a grown man living in California. Theo, saturated with memories of abuse and heartache, and filled with the simple wish to understand more about himself, returns to Chicago to reconnect with an old girlfriend from his troubled youth. Told in reverse order, this edgy and powerful novel slowly and subtly turns mysterious, as we attempt to recognize the root of Theo's plight and the source for his quietly wavering humanity. Synopsis:"Happy Baby is surely the most intelligent and beautiful book ever written about juvenile detention centers, sadomasochism, and drugs." --The New York Times Book ReviewHappy Baby is the story of Theo, once an orphan in the Chicago foster care system and now a grown man living in California. Theo, saturated with memories of abuse and heartache, and filled with the simple wish to understand more about himself, returns to Chicago to reconnect with an old girlfriend from his troubled youth. Told in reverse order, this edgy and powerful novel slowly and subtly turns mysterious, as we attempt to recognize the root of Theo's plight and the source for his quietly wavering humanity."A most impressive little novel, heartbreakingly and bewilderingly alive in a way most bigger books can't even imagine."--Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com"Happy Baby is surely the most intelligent and beautiful book ever written about juvenile detention centers, sadomasochism, and drugs.... Theo could appear freakish; but he is so fully drawn, and so honest about himself, that he seems touchingly normal...Heartbreaking."--The New York Times Book Review"By telling his story backward, Elliott puts us in a...position of wanting to know/dreading the knowledge, and it's a graceful strategy that gives Happy Baby its unique veracity and humane edge. It also allows the narrative to transcend the shocking details of Theo's life, which Elliott reveals in quick verbal jabs that pepper his otherwise tightly wound prose."--The Village VoiceStephen Elliott is the author of four novels as well as the nonfiction book Looking Forward to It: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process. A native of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco and lectures at Stanford University. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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