Donald Antrim – författare

Donald Antrim's mother Louanne was a difficult woman: an operatically suicidal, chainsmoking, delusional alcoholic who even when sober believed that her cat Merlin was a descendant of the Arthurian necromancer. Seeing his own life bound up in her relentless deterioration, Donald Antrim embarks on this strange, marvellous memoir in an attempt to make sense of his mother and her legacy.A series of tragic-comic adventures in psychological dysfunction, Antrim's personal journey takes him wandering across the Southern states of America, tracing the bust-ups, reconciliations, and migrations of his warring parents. Gradually he unpicks the stories of his childhood, and the characters: his handsome sportsman uncle; his hardworking, bewildered Episcopalian grandparents; and his mother herself - alarming, melodramatic, manipulative, reckless and brave. This is a vivid, unmissable Technicolor slideshow of a memoir.

_______________'... utterly delicious. A very surreal book and very witty' - The Times'One of the New Yorker's twenty writers for the twenty-first century, Antrim unmasks the fragility of identity with prodigious wit' - Esquire_______________Twenty psychoanalysts and a narrator meet for dinner in a pancake house. The narrator, Tom, finds himself locked in a bear hug by Bernhardt, the father figure of the group. The effects are disastrous as he is forced into an out-of-body experience and watches as his friendships and marriage unravel._______________'Antrim shares Vladimir Nabokov's revelry in wordplay, Thomas Pynchon's antic comedy and Donald Barthelme's sense of the surreal - he nonetheless manages to create, with each new novel, a fictional universe that's wholly, truly his own. The Verificationist is yet another tour de force, demonstrating again what makes Antrim's voice so compelling and unique' - Sunday Herald

As the sun lowered in the sky one Friday afternoon in April 2006, acclaimed author Donald Antrim found himself on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building, afraid for his life. In this moving memoir, Antrim vividly recounts what led him to the roof and what happened after he came back down: two hospitalisations, weeks of fruitless clinical trials, the terror of submitting to ECT—and the saving call from David Foster Wallace that convinced him to try it—as well as years of fitful recovery and setback.One Friday in April reframes suicide—whether in thought or action—as an illness in its own right, a unique consequence of trauma and personal isolation, rather than the choice of a depressed person. A necessary companion to William Styron’s classic Darkness Visible, this profound, insightful work sheds light on the tragedy and mystery of suicide, offering solace that may save lives.Named one of the Most Anticipated of Books of 2021 by The Los Angeles Times, Literary Hub and The Millions.

As the sun lowered in the sky one Friday afternoon in April 2006, acclaimed author Donald Antrim found himself on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building, afraid for his life. In this moving memoir, Antrim vividly recounts what led him to the roof and what happened after he came back down: two hospitalisations, weeks of fruitless clinical trials, the terror of submitting to ECT—and the saving call from David Foster Wallace that convinced him to try it—as well as years of fitful recovery and setback.Through a clear and haunting reckoning with the author’s own story, One Friday in April confronts the limits of our understanding of suicide. Donald Antrim’s personal insights reframe suicide—whether in thought or in action—as an illness in its own right, a unique consequence of trauma and personal isolation, rather than the choice of a depressed person.A necessary companion to William Styron’s classic Darkness Visible, this profound, insightful work sheds light on the tragedy and mystery of suicide, offering solace that may save lives.

In elegant, precise prose Donald Antrim crafts funny, tender stories of men and women disorientated by love, loss, and bouts of sorrow.An unfaithful husband goes out to buy flowers for his wife, while across town a new couple, both survivors of difficult childhoods, find comfort together in other people's apartments. On the edge of a university campus, a group of students are brought together by their ageing drama professor, whose predilection for pot and crush on his star pupil threaten to tip their performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream into a surreal and dangerous farce. And in the title story, a bereaved art teacher drives into the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia intending to throw away his ex-girlfriend's paintings.

Having accidentally inspired the local suburbanites to draw and quarter the town's blood-thirsty Mayor, Pete Robinson - civic-minded schoolteacher and enthusiastic historian of the Medieval Inquisition - embarks on a tenuous election campaign. But his sleepy town has entered a period of crisis; the local park is littered with landmines, the neighbours are building deadly moats around their homes, and his beautiful wife, Meredith, has discovered dark and powerful talents within herself, which threaten to transfigure their once serene lives forever. In amongst this chaos, can Mr Robinson satisfy the terrible will of the people?By turns funny and phantasmagorical, fiercely intelligent and imaginative, Donald Antrim's first novel of suburban civics turned macabre is a new American classic.