Synopses & Reviews
Michael Byers's award-winning debut collection, The Coast of Good Intentions, had the critics raving. "Byers's language, character range, perspectives, sensitivity, maturity, and clarity are incredible and often profound," said USA Today. This young writer's exhilarating first novel showcases his great gifts in the suspenseful story of a geneticist grappling with an astonishing discovery.
Dr. Henry Moss has long been seeking a cure for a congenital disease in children, called Hickman, that causes them to age rapidly and die before their teens. A thoughtful and dedicated man, Henry wants only to give his small, wizened patients their share of the bounteous future promised by this prosperous moment in dot-com Seattle. To his amazement, his study takes a remarkable turn: he is consulted by a family whose three-year-old son, Giles, is clearly stricken with Hickman. Giles's teenage brother also tests positive for the disease -- but he displays no symptoms. In fact, all the aging mechanisms in his body seem to have halted. This discovery is a potential goldmine. It is also a minefield of personal and medical ethics.
All around Henry, the world beckons with easy comfort and instant wealth. The temptation to fulfill his own family's longings is powerful. Henry's wife, trained as a doctor in her native Vienna, languishes in a dead-end job. Their two teenage children endure the pangs of adolescent yearning: Sandra, star of her basketball team, is in love with her sport and also with the wrong boy; Darren, at fourteen, drifts, hapless and unmoored.
Byers inhabits these wonderful characters, as well as this wholly American time and place, with the conviction that only the finest novelists can achieve. He is a writer who deals with the largest issues on a deeply human scale. Long for This World is vividly alive and achingly beautiful.
Review
"Byers's feeling for his characters is part of his appreciative wonder at the
world. ("Everything became history eventually, if you just left it alone.") He
applies acute psychological touches (Henry allows William's mother to give
her son the first injection) and displays a virtuosity with figurative language that
puts him in a class with such new American masters as Charles Baxter and
Antonya Nelson..." Thomas Mallon, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic review)
Review
"[W]hile lesser writers would probably allow the compelling plot to dominate the narrative, Byers takes equal time to deliver a sympathetic but unflinching portrait of the American middle class and its discontents, brilliantly capturing the texture of late-20th-century life and the innate decency and fallibility of human beings trying to cope with its challenges." Publishers Weekly
Review
"No one is overdrawn, everyone is as real and worth knowing as he or she can be....Deep and real." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
Byers' award-winning debut collection, "The Coast of Good Intentions, " won universal praise for its mature wisdom and deeply affecting characters. Now his exhilarating first novel showcases his extraordinary gifts in the suspenseful story of a geneticist grappling with an astonishing discovery.
Synopsis
'Michael Byers\'s award-winning debut collection, The Coast of Good Intentions, had the critics raving. \"Byers\'s language, character range, perspectives, sensitivity, maturity, and clarity are incredible and often profound,\" said USA Today. This young writer\'s exhilarating first novel showcases his great gifts in the suspenseful story of a geneticist grappling with an astonishing discovery.
Dr. Henry Moss has long been seeking a cure for a congenital disease in children, called Hickman, that causes them to age rapidly and die before their teens. A thoughtful and dedicated man, Henry wants only to give his small, wizened patients their share of the bounteous future promised by this prosperous moment in dot-com Seattle. To his amazement, his study takes a remarkable turn: he is consulted by a family whose three-year-old son, Giles, is clearly stricken with Hickman. Giles\'s teenage brother also tests positive for the disease -- but he displays no symptoms. In fact, all the aging mechanisms in his body seem to have halted. This discovery is a potential goldmine. It is also a minefield of personal and medical ethics.
All around Henry, the world beckons with easy comfort and instant wealth. The temptation to fulfill his own family\'s longings is powerful. Henry\'s wife, trained as a doctor in her native Vienna, languishes in a dead-end job. Their two teenage children endure the pangs of adolescent yearning: Sandra, star of her basketball team, is in love with her sport and also with the wrong boy; Darren, at fourteen, drifts, hapless and unmoored.
Byers inhabits these wonderful characters, as well as this wholly American time and place, with the conviction that only the finest novelists can achieve. He is a writer who deals with the largest issues on a deeply human scale. Long for This World is vividly alive and achingly beautiful.'
Synopsis
A wise and richly symphonic first novel, Long for This World is a thoroughly contemporary family drama that hinges on a riveting medical dilemma. Dr. Henry Moss is a dedicated geneticist who stumbles upon a possible cure for a disease that causes rapid aging and early death in children. Although his discovery may hold the key to eternal youth, exploiting it is an ethical minefield. Henry must make a painful choice: he can save the life of a critically ill boy he has grown to love at the cost of his career or he can sell his findings for a fortune to match the wealth of his dot-com-rich Seattle neighbors. Henry turns to his family for support, and in their intimately detailed lives unfolds a story of unforgettable characters grappling with their own demons.
About the Author
Michael Byers received his MFA from the University of Michigan and was a Stegner fellow at Stanford University. His story collection, The Coast of Good Intentions, won the Sue Kaufman Prize for first fiction from the Academy of American Arts and Letters. Byers also won a Whiting Foundation Writers Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Prize. His stories have been selected for both The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Awards. The New York Times called his stories "wonderful...shot through with the unexpected beauty of the ordinary."