Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Audiobook12 hours
The Locals: A Novel
Written by Jonathan Dee
Narrated by Ray Porter and George Newbern
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
"Summons up a small American town at precisely the right moment in our history . . . a bold, vital, and view-expanding novel."—George Saunders
A rural working-class New England town elects as its mayor a New York hedge fund millionaire in this inspired novel for our times—fiction in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Egan.
Mark Firth is a contractor and home restorer in Howland, Massachusetts, who feels opportunity passing his family by. After being swindled by a financial advisor, what future can Mark promise his wife, Karen, and their young daughter, Haley? He finds himself envying the wealthy weekenders in his community whose houses sit empty all winter.
Philip Hadi used to be one of these people. But in the nervous days after 9/11 he flees New York and hires Mark to turn his Howland home into a year-round "secure location" from which he can manage billions of dollars of other people's money. The collision of these two men's very different worlds—rural vs. urban, middle class vs. wealthy—is the engine of Jonathan Dee's powerful new novel.
Inspired by Hadi, Mark looks around for a surefire investment: the mid-decade housing boom. Over Karen's objections, and teaming up with his troubled brother, Gerry, Mark starts buying up local property with cheap debt. Then the town's first selectman dies suddenly, and Hadi volunteers for office. He soon begins subtly transforming Howland in his image—with unexpected results for Mark and his extended family.
Here are the dramas of twenty-first-century America—rising inequality, working class decline, a new authoritarianism—played out in the classic setting of some of our greatest novels: the small town. The Locals is that rare work of fiction capable of capturing a fraught American moment in real time.
Advance praise for The Locals
"The residents of a small town in the Berkshires have their world overturned by a billionaire in their midst. . . . [The Locals] plays both as political allegory and kaleidoscopic character study. An absorbing panorama of small-town life and a study of democracy in miniature."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Good old social novels are hard to come by these days, great ones harder still. Leave it to [Jonathan] Dee to fill the void with a book that's not only great but so frighteningly timely that the reader will be forced to wonder how he managed to compose it before the last election cycle."—Booklist (starred review)
"Engrossing . . . His blue-collar characters, each of them pursuing the American Dream, are vividly developed, and his insights into how they think about the government (ineffective and corrupt) and their rights as citizens (ignored, trampled) are timely. . . . [Dee] handles the plot with admirable skill, finding empathy for his bewildered characters. He creates tension as a reckoning day arrives, and strikes the perfect ending note."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A rural working-class New England town elects as its mayor a New York hedge fund millionaire in this inspired novel for our times—fiction in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Egan.
Mark Firth is a contractor and home restorer in Howland, Massachusetts, who feels opportunity passing his family by. After being swindled by a financial advisor, what future can Mark promise his wife, Karen, and their young daughter, Haley? He finds himself envying the wealthy weekenders in his community whose houses sit empty all winter.
Philip Hadi used to be one of these people. But in the nervous days after 9/11 he flees New York and hires Mark to turn his Howland home into a year-round "secure location" from which he can manage billions of dollars of other people's money. The collision of these two men's very different worlds—rural vs. urban, middle class vs. wealthy—is the engine of Jonathan Dee's powerful new novel.
Inspired by Hadi, Mark looks around for a surefire investment: the mid-decade housing boom. Over Karen's objections, and teaming up with his troubled brother, Gerry, Mark starts buying up local property with cheap debt. Then the town's first selectman dies suddenly, and Hadi volunteers for office. He soon begins subtly transforming Howland in his image—with unexpected results for Mark and his extended family.
Here are the dramas of twenty-first-century America—rising inequality, working class decline, a new authoritarianism—played out in the classic setting of some of our greatest novels: the small town. The Locals is that rare work of fiction capable of capturing a fraught American moment in real time.
Advance praise for The Locals
"The residents of a small town in the Berkshires have their world overturned by a billionaire in their midst. . . . [The Locals] plays both as political allegory and kaleidoscopic character study. An absorbing panorama of small-town life and a study of democracy in miniature."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Good old social novels are hard to come by these days, great ones harder still. Leave it to [Jonathan] Dee to fill the void with a book that's not only great but so frighteningly timely that the reader will be forced to wonder how he managed to compose it before the last election cycle."—Booklist (starred review)
"Engrossing . . . His blue-collar characters, each of them pursuing the American Dream, are vividly developed, and his insights into how they think about the government (ineffective and corrupt) and their rights as citizens (ignored, trampled) are timely. . . . [Dee] handles the plot with admirable skill, finding empathy for his bewildered characters. He creates tension as a reckoning day arrives, and strikes the perfect ending note."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Unavailable
Related to The Locals
Related audiobooks
Cuyahoga Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Theft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Main Street: 100th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everything Abridged Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The National Road: Dispatches from a Changing America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRemembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBabbit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLarry McMurtry: A Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsComic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTraitor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHomeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man from Glengarry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great Gatsby Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Race and the Suburbs in American Film Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVolume V: We Can Remember It for You Wholesale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/538 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier's End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Big Change: America Transforms Itself 1900-1950 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Courts of the Morning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bicycle Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEye of the Beholder: The Almost Perfect Murder of Anchorwoman Diane Newton King Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThieves Like Us Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Political Fiction For You
Animal Dreams: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Night Agent: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prodigal Summer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Notes from the Underground Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51984 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Jungle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Pilgrim: A Thriller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Against the Loveless World: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of the Locust: A Thriller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Committee Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flight Behavior Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kill Shot: An American Assassin Thriller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5State of Wonder: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inside Threat: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Agenda 21 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Warning: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/51900: Or; The Last President Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Overton Window Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Atlantropa Articles: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Lacuna Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Days of Wine and Covid Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Are All Good People Here Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Know What's Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Tenth Justice: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Under the Bridge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Chairlift Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Near Dark: A Thriller Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In the First Circle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Ideal Husband Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Locals
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
2 ratings0 reviews