A Handbook for Drowning
1991
First Published
3.57
Average Rating
177
Number of Pages
"Shields' lucid prose succinctly illuminates the larger context of Jaffe's life... It's even better at capturing the small picture."—Timothy Hunter, Cleveland Plain Dealer In Handbook for Drowning, Walter Jaffe grows up in a family obsessed with social justice; Walter fixates on his own mortality. The novel's pointillistic structure reflects the gap between the grief Walter feels for his dying mother and the impersonal rationality he's been taught to practice."
Avg Rating
3.57
Number of Ratings
100
5 STARS
14%
4 STARS
41%
3 STARS
36%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
3%
goodreads
Author
David Shields
Author · 20 books
David Shields is the author of fourteen books, including Reality Hunger (Knopf, 2010), which was named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications. GQ called it "the most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010"; the New York Times called it "a mind-bending manifesto." His previous book, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (Knopf, 2008), was a New York Times bestseller. His other books include Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Yale Review, Believer, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's, and Utne Reader; he's written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.
