Synopses & Reviews
This funny, exuberant novel captures the reader with the grand sweep of seven-foot-tall David "Lizard" Hochmeyer's larger-than-life quest to unravel the mystery surrounding his parents' deaths. It's a journey laden with pro football stars, a master chef and his beautiful transvestite lover, a world-famous ballerina and her English rocker husband, and a sister who's as brilliant as she is unstable. A wildly entertaining, plot-twisting novel of murder, seduction, and revenge — rich in incident, expansive in character, and lavish in setting — Life Among Giants is an exhilarating adventure.
Review
“A sprawling, exuberant novel filled with murder and lust and, mostly, love. Bill Roorbach is a writer with enormous vision and an even more enormous heart.” Ann Hood, author of The Red Thread
Review
“An operatic novel of grand emotions and grand events, a story about murder, money, and madness but also the worlds of dance, food, sports, and romance, all experienced at their over-the-top best....No one writes pleasure quite like Bill Roorbach.” Debra Spark, author of Good for the Jews
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“A book that’s big in the best of ways . . . Bill Roorbach has delivered his award-winning writing talents in one big bunch.”
—Clyde Edgerton
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"Hilarious and heartbreaking, wild and wise, Bill Roorbach's Life Among Giants, which is earning comparisons to The World According to Garp, is a vivid chronicle of a life lived large." Parade
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"A bighearted, big-boned story...Life Among Giants reads like something written by a kinder, gentler John Irving....Roorbach is a humane and entertaining storyteller with a smooth, graceful style." The Washington Post
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"Consistently surprising and truly entertaining....Part thriller, part family drama, Life Among Giants is deliciously strange and deeply affecting." The Boston Globe
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"[A] thrilling indulgence, a tale of opulence, love triangles, and madness, set against a sumptuous landscape of lust and feasts....This is a purely Gatsbyesque portrayal of celebrity." Publishers Weekly, starred boxed review
About the Author
Bill Roorbach is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Flannery O’Connor Prize and O. Henry Prize winner Big Bend, Into Woods, and Temple Stream. The tenth anniversary edition of his craft book, Writing Life Stories, is used in writing programs around the world. His work has been published in Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, the New York Times Magazine, Granta, New York, and dozens of other magazines and journals.