Reviews
“Joe McGinniss Jr.’s Damaged People is a major work in a minor key. Beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking, funny, evoking the universal in the particular story of two writers, father and son. Sr. is famous, distant, utterly self-absorbed. Jr. is honest, anxious, searching for something he fears is beyond his reach. I loved this book.” —David Maraniss, author of A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father “Every son is torn, perhaps, between a fear of turning out like his father and a fear of failing to live up to him. Joe McGinniss Jr.’s tender, searching, beautifully self-interrogative Damaged People threads the eye of both questions with remarkable intelligence and sensitivity. The result is book that is at once powerfully moving and utterly riveting, a lovely document of what it means to be a child, a spouse, and a parent.” —Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood Praise for Carousel Court: “A fearless novel about a family and a society on the brink . . . Harrowing but, against all odds, ultimately tender . . . [Nick and Phoebe] offer the possibility of a simple but enormous grace: that we may fail and still be loved, if only imperfectly, if only for a time.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Propulsive . . . Carousel Court is a raw, close-up portrait of a married couple tormented by money problems in the midst of a national recession. . . . The result is thrilling and uncomfortable—a novel that dwells in the filth of love and hate and blame and money in post-crash America with an intimacy that never lets up. . . . The marriage starts to feel not just tense but enormously dangerous. . . . It’s very hard to look away.” —Los Angeles Times “Fast . . . Foreboding . . . This couple will stop at nothing to keep their house and marriage afloat. . . . McGinniss spins an edgy tale, often laced with a reporter’s eye for the little details that make characters pop and convey a sarcastic take on what a certain slice of people need nowadays to feel uplifted: anti-anxiety pills, yes, but also the produce section of Whole Foods, where Phoebe has spent so much time that she’s learned ‘the fine mist showering the mustard greens, arugula, and summer squash is on a forty-second cycle—ten seconds on, thirty seconds off.’” —The Washington Post “Amazing . . . Raucously inventive . . . McGinniss’s gorgeous prose captures the agony of the ‘moaning winds and anguished cries coming from the bone-dry hills’ as well as the rare beauty of a day when ‘everything pops: the colors, the people, the thick, warm aroma of coffee, the bright sunlight.’ But he’s also a master at character, juxtaposing shallow Millennials with Phoebe and Nick, pointing out how the younger generation has ‘a margin for error’ that Phoebe and Nick simply can’t afford at their stage in life.” —San Francisco Chronicle “McGinniss is poised to become one of our sharpest observers of life in America at the start of the 21st century. . . . Watching things get ugly for Nick and Phoebe is riveting. . . . What makes the reader turn the pages of Carousel Court isn’t the tragedy that befalls Nick and Phoebe—it’s the threat of tragedy. The couple and their toddler are skating on the edge of a razor blade and the reader is hooked by their struggle to put their lives back together.” —Kirkus Reviews “Carousel Court is a gritty, raw novel that will have readers recalling the icy relationships found in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Adam Ross’s Mr. Peanut. McGinniss’s work is built on layers of tension and dark turns that, at times, surpass the twisted works of his contemporaries. . . . McGinniss deserves a lot of credit for handling the darkness so well. He never seems to overdo it. When he gets close to the edge, he adds in just the right amount of humor.” —Electric Literature “A novel of unrelenting tension . . . Phoebe is a lexicon of contradictions, a kind of update on Maria Wyeth of Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. McGinniss also recalls Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust in depicting their road, Carousel Court, as a catalog of strangeness and dangers: from coyotes and marauding home invaders to weird neighbors and crying, screaming cicadas. McGinniss . . . injects it with an urgency, a sense of constant, inescapable threat that all adds up to a taut page-turner.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Powerful . . . May have some readers recalling Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming.’ ” —Booklist (starred review)
“Damaged People is brave, sometimes painful, and always engrossing—about resilience, love, and hope. McGinniss is fiercely candid and a wonderful writer.” —David Sheff, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Boy “A beautiful written, compassionate but unsparing chronicle of a decent man enduring, learning from and trying to overcome the pain and wounds of life with (and more often without) a famous father, whose name and profession and writing talent he shares, but whose reckless, irredeemable selfishness he refuses to inherit.” —Kurt Andersen, New York Times bestselling author of Evil Geniuses “Damaged People is a story about a son and his father, and another story about a father and his son; both stories full of love and recrimination. This book cries out with tenderness and nostalgia. Deeply felt and deeply moving.” —Lili Anolik, author of Didion & Babitz “Joe McGinniss Jr.’s Damaged People is a major work in a minor key. Beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking, funny, evoking the universal in the particular story of two writers, father and son. Sr. is famous, distant, utterly self-absorbed. Jr. is honest, anxious, searching for something he fears is beyond his reach. I loved this book.” —David Maraniss, author of A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father “Every son is torn, perhaps, between a fear of turning out like his father and a fear of failing to live up to him. Joe McGinniss Jr.’s tender, searching, beautifully self-interrogative Damaged People threads the eye of both questions with remarkable intelligence and sensitivity. The result is book that is at once powerfully moving and utterly riveting, a lovely document of what it means to be a child, a spouse, and a parent.” —Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood “Moving between the 1970s and ’80s, when the author was a young boy anxious for his father’s attention, and the 2000s, when he’s grappling with being a father to a young son, McGinniss Jr. draws comparisons between who he was becoming and who McGinniss Sr. was as a writer and father. . . . His determination to break generational patterns resonates.” —Kirkus Reviews Praise for Carousel Court: “A fearless novel about a family and a society on the brink . . . Harrowing but, against all odds, ultimately tender . . . [Nick and Phoebe] offer the possibility of a simple but enormous grace: that we may fail and still be loved, if only imperfectly, if only for a time.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Propulsive . . . Carousel Court is a raw, close-up portrait of a married couple tormented by money problems in the midst of a national recession. . . . The result is thrilling and uncomfortable—a novel that dwells in the filth of love and hate and blame and money in post-crash America with an intimacy that never lets up. . . . The marriage starts to feel not just tense but enormously dangerous. . . . It’s very hard to look away.” —Los Angeles Times “Fast . . . Foreboding . . . This couple will stop at nothing to keep their house and marriage afloat. . . . McGinniss spins an edgy tale, often laced with a reporter’s eye for the little details that make characters pop and convey a sarcastic take on what a certain slice of people need nowadays to feel uplifted: anti-anxiety pills, yes, but also the produce section of Whole Foods, where Phoebe has spent so much time that she’s learned ‘the fine mist showering the mustard greens, arugula, and summer squash is on a forty-second cycle—ten seconds on, thirty seconds off.’” —The Washington Post “Amazing . . . Raucously inventive . . . McGinniss’s gorgeous prose captures the agony of the ‘moaning winds and anguished cries coming from the bone-dry hills’ as well as the rare beauty of a day when ‘everything pops: the colors, the people, the thick, warm aroma of coffee, the bright sunlight.’ But he’s also a master at character, juxtaposing shallow Millennials with Phoebe and Nick, pointing out how the younger generation has ‘a margin for error’ that Phoebe and Nick simply can’t afford at their stage in life.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Praise for Carousel Court: ""A fearless novel about a family and a society on the brink . . . Harrowing but, against all odds, ultimately tender . . . [Nick and Phoebe] offer the possibility of a simple but enormous grace: that we may fail and still be loved, if only imperfectly, if only for a time."" --O, The Oprah Magazine ""Carousel Court is a gritty, raw novel that will have readers recalling the icy relationships found in Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Adam Ross's Mr. Peanut. McGinniss's work is built on layers of tension and dark turns that, at times, surpass the twisted works of his contemporaries. . . . McGinniss deserves a lot of credit for handling the darkness so well. He never seems to overdo it. When he gets close to the edge, he adds in just the right amount of humor."" --Electric Literature ""A novel of unrelenting tension . . . Phoebe is a lexicon of contradictions, a kind of update on Maria Wyeth of Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays. McGinniss also recalls Nathanael West's Day of the Locust in depicting their road, Carousel Court, as a catalog of strangeness and dangers: from coyotes and marauding home invaders to weird neighbors and crying, screaming cicadas. McGinniss . . . injects it with an urgency, a sense of constant, inescapable threat that all adds up to a taut page-turner."" --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ""Amazing . . . Raucously inventive . . . McGinniss's gorgeous prose captures the agony of the 'moaning winds and anguished cries coming from the bone-dry hills' as well as the rare beauty of a day when 'everything pops: the colors, the people, the thick, warm aroma of coffee, the bright sunlight.' But he's also a master at character, juxtaposing shallow Millennials with Phoebe and Nick, pointing out how the younger generation has 'a margin for error' that Phoebe and Nick simply can't afford at their stage in life."" --San Francisco Chronicle ""Fast . . . Foreboding . . . This couple will stop at nothing to keep their house and marriage afloat. . . . McGinniss spins an edgy tale, often laced with a reporter's eye for the little details that make characters pop and convey a sarcastic take on what a certain slice of people need nowadays to feel uplifted: anti-anxiety pills, yes, but also the produce section of Whole Foods, where Phoebe has spent so much time that she's learned 'the fine mist showering the mustard greens, arugula, and summer squash is on a forty-second cycle--ten seconds on, thirty seconds off.'"" --The Washington Post ""Gripping . . . A portrait of a marriage as volatile as the economy."" --The Millions ""Harrowing, smart, wickedly accurate about the third world of the contemporary United States, and very well written."" --Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk about Kevin ""Here it is, the leveraged, frayed, unfaithful, buzzed America that all the baloney entertainment products, including a lot that pose as literature, are designed to cover up. Can you handle the truth? Then step inside. This scathing novel of our strange new century is like nothing else I've read in years."" --Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air ""McGinniss is poised to become one of our sharpest observers of life in America at the start of the 21st century. . . . Watching things get ugly for Nick and Phoebe is riveting. . . . What makes the reader turn the pages of Carousel Court isn't the tragedy that befalls Nick and Phoebe--it's the threat of tragedy. The couple and their toddler are skating on the edge of a razor blade and the reader is hooked by their struggle to put their lives back together."" --Kirkus Reviews ""McGinniss writes with a keen feel for the contemporary zeitgeist. . . . His characters in Carousel Court move in a brutal world of broken personal connections, social unrest, and financial desperation. . . . Yet McGinniss opens a window of hope as Nick and Phoebe survive the mess they make of their lives."" --Shelf Awareness (starred review) ""Powerful . . . May have some readers recalling Yeats' poem 'The Second Coming.' "" --Booklist (starred review) ""Propulsive . . . Carousel Court is a raw, close-up portrait of a married couple tormented by money problems in the midst of a national recession. . . . The result is thrilling and uncomfortable--a novel that dwells in the filth of love and hate and blame and money in post-crash America with an intimacy that never lets up. . . . The marriage starts to feel not just tense but enormously dangerous. . . . It's very hard to look away."" --Los Angeles Times ""Propulsive . . . The novel's nearly 100 vignettes--many of them gems of concision and electric prose that lay bare the darker sides of Nick and Phoebe, as well as the handful of coworkers and eccentric neighbors who swirl down the drain with them--mirror the discontent seething just beneath the surface of an ersatz American dream. . . . McGinniss is at his best when describing, with anthropological intensity, the throes of a broken relationship."" --Publishers Weekly ""Totally addictive."" --Bookish
“Joe McGinniss Jr.’s Damaged People is a major work in a minor key. Beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking, funny, evoking the universal in the particular story of two writers, father and son. Sr. is famous, distant, utterly self-absorbed. Jr. is honest, anxious, searching for something he fears is beyond his reach. I loved this book.” —David Maraniss, author of A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father “Every son is torn, perhaps, between a fear of turning out like his father and a fear of failing to live up to him. Joe McGinniss Jr.’s tender, searching, beautifully self-interrogative Damaged People threads the eye of both questions with remarkable intelligence and sensitivity. The result is book that is at once powerfully moving and utterly riveting, a lovely document of what it means to be a child, a spouse, and a parent.” —Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood “Moving between the 1970s and ’80s, when the author was a young boy anxious for his father’s attention, and the 2000s, when he’s grappling with being a father to a young son, McGinniss Jr. draws comparisons between who he was becoming and who McGinniss Sr. was as a writer and father. . . . His determination to break generational patterns resonates.” —Kirkus Reviews Praise for Carousel Court: “A fearless novel about a family and a society on the brink . . . Harrowing but, against all odds, ultimately tender . . . [Nick and Phoebe] offer the possibility of a simple but enormous grace: that we may fail and still be loved, if only imperfectly, if only for a time.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Propulsive . . . Carousel Court is a raw, close-up portrait of a married couple tormented by money problems in the midst of a national recession. . . . The result is thrilling and uncomfortable—a novel that dwells in the filth of love and hate and blame and money in post-crash America with an intimacy that never lets up. . . . The marriage starts to feel not just tense but enormously dangerous. . . . It’s very hard to look away.” —Los Angeles Times “Fast . . . Foreboding . . . This couple will stop at nothing to keep their house and marriage afloat. . . . McGinniss spins an edgy tale, often laced with a reporter’s eye for the little details that make characters pop and convey a sarcastic take on what a certain slice of people need nowadays to feel uplifted: anti-anxiety pills, yes, but also the produce section of Whole Foods, where Phoebe has spent so much time that she’s learned ‘the fine mist showering the mustard greens, arugula, and summer squash is on a forty-second cycle—ten seconds on, thirty seconds off.’” —The Washington Post “Amazing . . . Raucously inventive . . . McGinniss’s gorgeous prose captures the agony of the ‘moaning winds and anguished cries coming from the bone-dry hills’ as well as the rare beauty of a day when ‘everything pops: the colors, the people, the thick, warm aroma of coffee, the bright sunlight.’ But he’s also a master at character, juxtaposing shallow Millennials with Phoebe and Nick, pointing out how the younger generation has ‘a margin for error’ that Phoebe and Nick simply can’t afford at their stage in life.” —San Francisco Chronicle “McGinniss is poised to become one of our sharpest observers of life in America at the start of the 21st century. . . . Watching things get ugly for Nick and Phoebe is riveting. . . . What makes the reader turn the pages of Carousel Court isn’t the tragedy that befalls Nick and Phoebe—it’s the threat of tragedy. The couple and their toddler are skating on the edge of a razor blade and the reader is hooked by their struggle to put their lives back together.” —Kirkus Reviews “Carousel Court is a gritty, raw novel that will have readers recalling the icy relationships found in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Adam Ross’s Mr. Peanut. McGinniss’s work is built on layers of tension and dark turns that, at times, surpass the twisted works of his contemporaries. . . . McGinniss deserves a lot of credit for handling the darkness so well. He never seems to overdo it. When he gets close to the edge, he adds in just the right amount of humor.” —Electric Literature “A novel of unrelenting tension . . . Phoebe is a lexicon of contradictions, a kind of update on Maria Wyeth of Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. McGinniss also recalls Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust in depicting their road, Carousel Court, as a catalog of strangeness and dangers: from coyotes and marauding home invaders to weird neighbors and crying, screaming cicadas. McGinniss . . . injects it with an urgency, a sense of constant, inescapable threat that all adds up to a taut page-turner.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Praise for Carousel Court: “A fearless novel about a family and a society on the brink . . . Harrowing but, against all odds, ultimately tender . . . [Nick and Phoebe] offer the possibility of a simple but enormous grace: that we may fail and still be loved, if only imperfectly, if only for a time.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Propulsive . . . Carousel Court is a raw, close-up portrait of a married couple tormented by money problems in the midst of a national recession. . . . The result is thrilling and uncomfortable—a novel that dwells in the filth of love and hate and blame and money in post-crash America with an intimacy that never lets up. . . . The marriage starts to feel not just tense but enormously dangerous. . . . It’s very hard to look away.” —Los Angeles Times “Fast . . . Foreboding . . . This couple will stop at nothing to keep their house and marriage afloat. . . . McGinniss spins an edgy tale, often laced with a reporter’s eye for the little details that make characters pop and convey a sarcastic take on what a certain slice of people need nowadays to feel uplifted: anti-anxiety pills, yes, but also the produce section of Whole Foods, where Phoebe has spent so much time that she’s learned ‘the fine mist showering the mustard greens, arugula, and summer squash is on a forty-second cycle—ten seconds on, thirty seconds off.’” —The Washington Post “Amazing . . . Raucously inventive . . . McGinniss’s gorgeous prose captures the agony of the ‘moaning winds and anguished cries coming from the bone-dry hills’ as well as the rare beauty of a day when ‘everything pops: the colors, the people, the thick, warm aroma of coffee, the bright sunlight.’ But he’s also a master at character, juxtaposing shallow Millennials with Phoebe and Nick, pointing out how the younger generation has ‘a margin for error’ that Phoebe and Nick simply can’t afford at their stage in life.” —San Francisco Chronicle “McGinniss is poised to become one of our sharpest observers of life in America at the start of the 21st century. . . . Watching things get ugly for Nick and Phoebe is riveting. . . . What makes the reader turn the pages of Carousel Court isn’t the tragedy that befalls Nick and Phoebe—it’s the threat of tragedy. The couple and their toddler are skating on the edge of a razor blade and the reader is hooked by their struggle to put their lives back together.” —Kirkus Reviews “Carousel Court is a gritty, raw novel that will have readers recalling the icy relationships found in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Adam Ross’s Mr. Peanut. McGinniss’s work is built on layers of tension and dark turns that, at times, surpass the twisted works of his contemporaries. . . . McGinniss deserves a lot of credit for handling the darkness so well. He never seems to overdo it. When he gets close to the edge, he adds in just the right amount of humor.” —Electric Literature “A novel of unrelenting tension . . . Phoebe is a lexicon of contradictions, a kind of update on Maria Wyeth of Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. McGinniss also recalls Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust in depicting their road, Carousel Court, as a catalog of strangeness and dangers: from coyotes and marauding home invaders to weird neighbors and crying, screaming cicadas. McGinniss . . . injects it with an urgency, a sense of constant, inescapable threat that all adds up to a taut page-turner.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Powerful . . . May have some readers recalling Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming.’ ” —Booklist (starred review) “Propulsive . . . The novel’s nearly 100 vignettes—many of them gems of concision and electric prose that lay bare the darker sides of Nick and Phoebe, as well as the handful of coworkers and eccentric neighbors who swirl down the drain with them—mirror the discontent seething just beneath the surface of an ersatz American dream. . . . McGinniss is at his best when describing, with anthropological intensity, the throes of a broken relationship.” —Publishers Weekly “Totally addictive.” —Bookish “Gripping . . . A portrait of a marriage as volatile as the economy.” —The Millions “McGinniss writes with a keen feel for the contemporary zeitgeist. . . . His characters in Carousel Court move in a brutal world of broken personal connections, social unrest, and financial desperation. . . . Yet McGinniss opens a window of hope as Nick and Phoebe survive the mess they make of their lives.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review) “Here it is, the leveraged, frayed, unfaithful, buzzed America that all the baloney entertainment products, including a lot that pose as literature, are designed to cover up. Can you handle the truth? Then step inside. This scathing novel of our strange new century is like nothing else I’ve read in years.” —Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air “Harrowing, smart, wickedly accurate about the third world of the contemporary United States, and very well written.” —Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk about Kevin
