Overview

With The Hole We're In--a bold, timeless, yet all too timely novel about a troubled American family navigating an even more troubled America--award-winning author and screenwriter, Gabrielle Zevin, delivers a work that places her in the ranks of our shrewdest social observers and top literary talents. Meet the Pomeroys: a church-going family living in a too-red house in a Texas college town. Roger, the patriarch, has impulsively gone back to school, only to find his future ambitions at odds with the temptations of the present. His wife, Georgia, tries to keep things afloat at home, but she's been feeding the bill drawer with unopened envelopes for months and never manages to confront its swelling contents. In an attempt to climb out of the holes they've dug, Roger and Georgia make a series of choices that have catastrophic consequences for their three children--especially for Patsy, the youngest, who will spend most of her life fighting to overcome them. The Hole We're In shines a spotlight on some of the most relevant issues of today: over-reliance on credit, gender and class politics, and the war in Iraq. But it is Zevin's deft exploration of the fragile economy of family life that makes this a book for the ages.

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9780802119230

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An unflinching depiction of an all-American family. Hypocritical, debt-ridden, God-fearing--there might not be much to admire about Zevin's characters, but there is much to love about them. The Hole We're In is a compelling read, and a true and honest novel. -- Binnie Kirshenbaum

Equal parts sharply funny and sobering, Zevin's portrait of a family in financial free fall captures the zeitgeist. -- People <br> Every day newspaper articles chronicle families battered by the recession, circling the drain in unemployment and debt or scraping by with minimum-wage jobs. But no novel has truly captured that struggle until now. . . . [Zevin's characerts]--flawed, devoted, cranky, impetuous, utterly relatable--come blazingly alive . . . [in this chronicle of] how a once-loving family reacts when times get bad. --Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly (A-) <br> In the provocative novel The Hole We're In . . . Gabrielle Zevin follows the Pomeroy [family] from 1998 to 2022 and addresses such issues as abortion, racism, and the emotional fallout of a stress-filled economy. Yet somehow the novel feels generous: We identify with the Pomeroys' troubles while we gasp at their casual brutality and marvel at [youngest daughter] Patsy, who journeys from oppressive Bible schools to military service in Iraq and, finally, to becoming a more loving mother than her own could have dreamed of being. -- O, The Oprah Magazine <br> The Hole We're In criticizes our rabid consumer culture, as well as the people who've bought into it without examining the actual or hidden costs. . . . Zevin's writing is often surprisingly, if darkly, funny, thanks to her wry and astute cultural observations. . . . [Main character] Patsy is flawed like the rest of her family, but she also has complex thoughts and tries to live without hypocrisy . . . Zevin breathes real life into this tough-girl vet, a heroine for our times, recognizable from life but new to fiction. --Malena Watrous, The New York Times Book Review <br> It's hard to pinpoint exactly what is so compelling about Gabrielle Zevin's new novel. Merely summarizing the plot doesn't do the book justice--it's far more gripping than you'd expect from a family drama about the consequences of falling deeper and deeper i

Author Information

Zevin is the author of two award-winning young adult novels, ELSEWHERE and MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC. She is also the author of MARGARETTOWN, a novel. Her books books have been lauded everywhere from coast to coast by reviewers, and her work has been translated into 18 languages. She is also a filmmaker, and lives in New York City.

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