Margins
Man Alive! book cover
Man Alive!
2013
First Published
3.46
Average Rating
304
Number of Pages

A warm, funny, and profoundly original novel about a family dealing with disaster, from a rising literary star. All it takes is a quarter to change pediatric psychiatrist Dr. Owen Lerner’s life. When the coin he’s feeding into a parking meter is struck by lightning, Lerner survives, except that now all he wants to do is barbecue. What will happen to his patients, who rely on him to make sense of their world? More important, what will happen to his family? The bolt of lightning that lifts Lerner into the air sends the entire Lerner clan into free fall. Mary Kay Zuravleff depicts family-on-family pain with generosity and devastating humor as she explores how much we are each allowed to change within a family—and without. Man Alive! captures Owen and Toni Lerner and their nearly grown children so vividly you’ll be looking over your shoulder to make sure the author hasn’t been watching your own family in action.

Avg Rating
3.46
Number of Ratings
415
5 STARS
21%
4 STARS
29%
3 STARS
32%
2 STARS
13%
1 STARS
6%
goodreads

Author

Mary Kay Zuravleff
Mary Kay Zuravleff
Author · 5 books
Mary Kay Zuravleff is the author of four novels. Her latest, American Ending, was praised by Alice McDermott as "wholly fresh and achingly believable." Her third book, Man Alive!, was a Washington Post Notable Book, and the New York Times called her second, The Bowl Is Already Broken, "a tart, affectionate satire of the museum world's bickering and scheming." The Frequency of Souls, her first book, won the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the James Jones Award. She grew up in Oklahoma City and has made Washington, D.C., her home. She has written and edited extensively for the Smithsonian and taught writing just about everywhere.
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