Synopses & Reviews
When Yuvi's wife finds him in his underwear, standing on top of his desk, she isn't particularly impressed with his writing habits.
But Yuvi worries. He has a wife who wants things he can't give her, an editor who wants a book he can't deliver, a brother-in-law whose gastrointestinal disease may lead him to a morbid end, and dead parents who, well, they don't really want anything, but that doesn't stop the memory of them from haunting him.
As the structure of Yuvi's novel falls apart, so do his life and marriage. His novel and his life blend together as he struggles to pull out of the mess, traveling from his suburban Jewish home in Atlanta to the North Carolina mountains of his father's childhood, to several hospital waiting rooms, to the living room of a grieving Palestinian man, and even to Uranus (and back, of course).
Heartbreaking and hilarious, A Brilliant Novel in the Works is the utterly original debut novel from Yuvi Zalkow, praised by Cheryl Strayed as "the secret love child of the smartest person you've ever met and the weirdo who lives down the block."
Review
"Yuvi Zalkow brilliantly navigates the territory between your head and your heart, and down to your privates." Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Chronology of Water and Dora: A Headcase
Review
"If you buy just one book this year, consider resting this book on top of it. Yuvi Zalkow is a writer I'm going to watch from a safe distance." Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story, Aburdistan, and The Russian Debutante's Handbook
Review
"Yuvi Zalkow writes like the secret love child of the smartest person you've ever met and the weirdo who lives down the block. In A Brilliant Novel in the Works, he mines the territory between heartbreak and hilarity with a voice so original it's as if he made the territory up. His prose is wise and perceptive, generous and bold, funny and tender. The truest thing I can say about this ambitiously realized debut is: you must read this." Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, Torch, and the Dear Sugar advice column
Synopsis
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 A neurotic writer's novel begins to come to life as he struggles to save his marriage and his fledgling career. When Yuvi's wife finds him in his underwear, standing on top of his desk, she isn't terribly impressed with him and his writing habits.
But Yuvi worries. He has a wife who wants things he can't give, an editor who wants a book he can't deliver, a brother-in-law with a gut disease that he can't fix, and dead parents who stubbornly remain dead.
As the structure of Yuvi's novel falls apart, so does his life. His novel and his life blend together as he struggles to pull out of the mess. He revisits the fragments of his unreconciled past and his pantsless present, traveling from his suburban Jewish home in Atlanta to the North Carolina mountains of his father's childhood, to several hospital waiting rooms, to the living room of a grieving Palestinian man.
Heartbreaking and hilarious, A Brilliant Novel in the Works is the utterly original debut novel from Yuvi Zalkow. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name: "Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow: yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat: yes; mso-style-parent: ""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family: "Calibri,""sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;}
About the Author
Yuvi Zalkow received his MFA from Antioch University and his stories have been published in Glimmer Train, Narrative Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, Carve Magazine, and others. He is the creator of the "I'm a Failed Writer" online video series and has been rejected more than 600 times by reputable and disreputable journals.