Charlie Barnes, sixty-eight years old, reasonable man, small-business owner is facing the abyss and it's time to reckon with how he has lived his life so far. What happened to all those great ideas that were snatched from the jaws of success? And what was with all those unsuccessful marriages? Well, who's counting the wives when Barbara, his fifth and most permanent wife, is such a rock solid pillar of society?Maybe Jake Barnes, son of Charlie and writer of his story is counting. Now that his father seems to be on the way out, Jake begins to wonder what Charlie Barnes's desperate dreams of success have really added up to. If his father's life was a series of fantasies, then how is it possible for his son to tell the truth about him? And will Jake have to confront the fact that in their ambitions, and their delusions, they might not actually be so very different?Joshua Ferris's new novel is both a profoundly tender and brutally funny portrayal of a life lost in the American dream.

Brought to you by Penguin. From the Booker-shortlisted author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour comes a novel about fathers, sons, thwarted dreams and confronting the reality of who we really areCharlie Barnes is a mid-century man devoted to his newspaper and his landline. But Charlie is about to get dragged into our troubled age by his storyteller son, who has a different idea of him than he has of himself. Then there are his other children, his ex-wives, present wife, business clients, friends and acquaintances, all of whom have their competing opinions of Charlie.He certainly seems simple enough: he''s a striver, a romantic, and a thoroughgoing capitalist. But suddenly blindsided by the Great Recession and a dose of bad news, he might have to rethink his life from top to bottom, and on short notice. What makes a man real? What makes him good? And how does the story we tell about ourselves line up with the lives that we actually live?''Funny, moving, and formally a work of genius, A Calling for Charlie Barnes is quite literally the book Joshua Ferris was born to write'' Garth Risk Hallberg, author of City on Fire''Dazzling. Mind-blowing. About as much fun as you can have without risking arrest'' Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls''Wonderful: fast and deep, urgent and brilliant . . . A hilarious, intimate, and scathing takedown of so many American vanities'' Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia© Joshua Ferris 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Charlie Barnes, sixty-eight years old, reasonable man, small-business owner is facing the abyss and it's time to reckon with how he has lived his life so far. What happened to all those great ideas that were snatched from the jaws of success? And what was with all those unsuccessful marriages? Well, who's counting the wives when Barbara, his fifth and most permanent wife, is such a rock solid pillar of society?Maybe Jake Barnes, son of Charlie and writer of his story is counting. Now that his father seems to be on the way out, Jake begins to wonder what Charlie Barnes's desperate dreams of success have really added up to. If his father's life was a series of fantasies, then how is it possible for his son to tell the truth about him? And will Jake have to confront the fact that in their ambitions, and their delusions, they might not actually be so very different?Joshua Ferris's new novel is both a profoundly tender and brutally funny portrayal of a life lost in the American dream.

Brought to you by Penguin. From the Booker-shortlisted author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour comes a novel about fathers, sons, thwarted dreams and confronting the reality of who we really areCharlie Barnes is a mid-century man devoted to his newspaper and his landline. But Charlie is about to get dragged into our troubled age by his storyteller son, who has a different idea of him than he has of himself. Then there are his other children, his ex-wives, present wife, business clients, friends and acquaintances, all of whom have their competing opinions of Charlie.He certainly seems simple enough: he''s a striver, a romantic, and a thoroughgoing capitalist. But suddenly blindsided by the Great Recession and a dose of bad news, he might have to rethink his life from top to bottom, and on short notice. What makes a man real? What makes him good? And how does the story we tell about ourselves line up with the lives that we actually live?''Funny, moving, and formally a work of genius, A Calling for Charlie Barnes is quite literally the book Joshua Ferris was born to write'' Garth Risk Hallberg, author of City on Fire''Dazzling. Mind-blowing. About as much fun as you can have without risking arrest'' Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls''Wonderful: fast and deep, urgent and brilliant . . . A hilarious, intimate, and scathing takedown of so many American vanities'' Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia© Joshua Ferris 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021