{ "item_title" : "How to Leave the House", "item_author" : [" Nathan Newman "], "item_description" : "A New Yorker Best Book of the Year It may sound peculiar that a story featuring chapter-length text message exchanges and a hysterical egg fight during a gender reveal party could contain such potent, moving allusions to philosophy and James Joyce, let alone be filled with richly observed artistic references reminiscent of Ali Smith, but Newman weaves the analytical and the absurd with a raucous grace. . .Profound--and profoundly sidesplitting. --Bobby Finger, The New York Times Book Review It's Natwest's last day before he leaves for university, and there's only one thing on his mind: the deeply embarrassing package he ordered to his house--which still hasn't arrived. He won't leave town without it. Any alternative is too distressing to consider. . . This is the story of twenty-four hours in the life of Natwest, and his small-town odyssey in pursuit of the missing package. And yet it's also the story of a middle-aged dentist who dreams of being a respected artist--but the only thing he can seem to paint is the human mouth. And it's the story of a tortured imam involved in a quasi-romantic entanglement with the local vicar; and an octogenerian mourning the death of her secretive husband; and a troubled teenager whose nudes have leaked on the internet. It's the story of Natwest's obnoxious ex-boyfriend, and his class-traitor mother and her childhood boyfriend, and the life-changing secrets he knows about Natwest's past. Alternating between Natwest's idiosyncratic inner world and the perspectives of the other characters--and dazzling in its energy, imagination and originality--this is an outrageously funny and tenderly moving story about being connected to everyone and everything at all times; about love, friendship, and the lies we tell ourselves; about unhappy endings, happy endings--and whether anything really is as simple as one or the other.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/365/490/0593654900_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.00", "online_price" : "29.00", "our_price" : "29.00", "club_price" : "29.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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Nathan Newman’s first novel, How to Leave the House, tracks a young man named Natwest in his quest to reclaim a missing package. Inside the package: a large sex toy. Along the way, various players in Natwest’s small town step forward to share apparent wisdom with the young man, in scenes that range from ludicrous to genuinely philosophical. Through these loosely connected narratives, readers encounter a bawdy tale of the unseriousness of existence and the impossibility of knowing our neighbors. Some chapters relate Natwest’s interior narrative (often obnoxiously laden with literary and artistic references), while others inhabit the minds of other characters, including his dentist (obsessed with painting mouths), his former English teacher (recovered from cancer and looking for sex) and his mother (proud of her son and desperate to show it). There are comedic and entertaining stories, especially one involving an egg fight and one in which a woman dances on her brother’s grave. Others are upsetting and cruel, like the chapter narrated by Natwest’s self-loathing ex-boyfriend, and another about the provocative internet activities of a girl named Lily. In one storyline, an imam named Mishaal struggles with his love for classic cinema. He is enraptured by closeups of Ingrid Bergman, tortured by them as if he were having an illicit affair. When the imam encounters Natwest, he lectures the young man on binaries: “If it’s not Chaplin or Keaton, it’s Spielberg or Scorsese. If it’s not Spielberg or Scorsese, it’s Truffaut or Godard.” He insists that Natwest embrace his inner Keaton and stop trying to be a Chaplin. Natwest’s story, along with everyone else’s, is bisected, torn between conflicting desires. The characters’ fates are ambivalent, not only in that we don’t know how things will work out for them, but also because none of them know how they’d like their stories to turn out. “I believe that a happy ending is at least as realistic as an unhappy one,” the imam says. Natwest is horrified by that idea, as the young man insists that unhappiness is “real shit.” How to Leave the House is fiction as friction, designed for discomfort. This is a novel of dichotomies that beg to be challenged, with psychological spaces that desperately need transparency but are inherently, tragically closed off to each other.

Read our Q&A with Nathan Newman about How to Leave the House.