{ "item_title" : "Talk to Me", "item_author" : [" John Kenney "], "item_description" : "Entertainment Weekly, New & NotableNew York Post, Best Book of the WeekBy the author of the New York Times bestseller, Love Poems for Married People, and the Thurber Prize-winner Truth in Advertising comes a wry yet tenderhearted look at how one man's public fall from grace leads him back to his family, and back to the man he used to be. It's a story that Ted Grayson has reported time and time again in his job as a network TV anchor: the public downfall of those at the top. He just never imagined that it would happen to him. After his profanity-laced tirade is caught on camera, his reputation and career are destroyed, leaving him without a script for the first time in years. While American viewers may have loved and trusted Ted for decades, his family certainly didn't: His years of constant travel and his big-screen persona have frayed all of his important relationships. At the time of his meltdown, Ted is estranged from his wife, Claire, and his adult daughter, Franny, a writer for a popular website. Franny views her father's disgrace with curiosity and perhaps a bit of smug satisfaction, but when her boss suggests that she confront Ted in an interview, she has to decide whether to use his loss as her career gain. And for Ted, this may be a chance to take a hard look at what got him to this place, and to try to find his way back before it's too late. Talk to Me is a sharply observed, darkly funny, and ultimately warm story about a man who wakes up too late to the mess he's made of his life... and about our capacity for forgiveness and empathy.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/73/521/437/0735214379_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "26.00", "online_price" : "26.00", "our_price" : "26.00", "club_price" : "26.00", "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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Talk to Me

It’s a phenomenon that has become all too familiar in the age of YouTube: An embarrassing video of a celebrity goes viral, obliterating a reputation with the speed and thoroughgoing devastation of an F5 tornado. In Talk to Me, his sly second novel, John Kenney (author of Truth in Advertising, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2014) dives into the muck of one such scandal, exploring its human toll while raising troubling questions about what it means to produce and consume news today.

The anchor of a highly rated network news show for two decades, Ted Grayson looks like he’s on top of his game. But when his ire at a young immigrant woman leads to a meltdown that’s captured on video, he’s launched on a downward spiral that threatens his career and causes him to question everything he thought he knew about being a journalist. Compounding Ted’s crisis is an impending divorce and the fact that his daughter, Franny, works as a reporter at the bottom-feeding website scheisse.com, run by a young German billionaire whose motto is “NO RULES. JUST CLICKS,” and who’s only too happy to capitalize on Ted’s sudden fall.

Kenney takes the reader inside the maelstrom of the 24/7 news cycle, as an increasingly bewildered Ted watches his world collapse around him, helpless to counteract the forces fueling his destruction. In Ted, Kenney has created a sympathetic and fully realized protagonist who’s haunted by the price he’s paid for a success that now seems hollow, by the decay of his marriage to a woman he still loves and by an estrangement from his daughter that’s deep enough to allow her to become complicit in his downfall.

For all the fast-paced and knowing entertainment it provides, Talk to Me may also serve as a useful antidote to rushed judgment when the next celebrity scandal erupts.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.