Rick Moody – författare

Having fled his less than perfect home life years ago, Hex Raitcliffe returns to help his ailing mother after his stepfather walks out on her, but over the course of one weekend, Hex's good intentions wear thin as the family airs its grievances.

Like many of their contemporaries, novelists Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke attended Sunday school as kids but drifted away from religion as adolescents. Now, as adults, they are grappling anew with the teachings of the Bible. Rejecting the hard-edged dogmas of many mainline denominations, they have reread the New Testament, reviewed their own life experiences -- and come up with their own personal interpretations of Christian tenets.Moody and Steinke's renewed interest in Christianity struck a chord with other notable writers -- and the result is this extraordinary collection of original essays. Gathering together some of the freshest and most thought-provoking voices in contemporary literature -- including Madison Smartt Bell, Benjamin Cheever, Lydia Davis, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lucy Grealey, bell hooks, Ann Padgett, Joanna Scott, and Kim Wozencraft -- joyful Noise offers a fascinating range of probing and very personal interpretations of what Christianity means today. Whether it's Kathy Bowman's poetic riffs on the significance of "Jesus's Feet" or Barry Hannah's guilt-tinged recollections of a neighborhood outcast who went on to find fulfillment as a hippie minister, these remarkable and wonderfully eclectic meditations are sure to find an eager audience among boomers and twentysomethings looking to renew their faith.

'One of the wittiest books about family life ever written' Guardian'A hilarious, remarkable and beautiful book' Jeffrey Eugenides 'A blackly funny and beautifully written novel' Sunday TimesSuburban New England, and the Hood family are about to wish they'd stayed home....1973 - 'The last year of the sixties' as the author describes it. Amidst the worst storm for 30 years the local families gather for a party - the highlight of which is the wife-swapping 'key game' - and for two couples this supposedly harmless piece of liberal-minded entertainment spells permanent disaster.Astutely acerbic, painfully funny, The Ice Storm is an astonishing novel of the decade that taste forgot.

Reginald Edward Morse is a man in need of an outlet. And he finds it in a very twenty-first century place: the internet. Specifically, RateYourLodging.com, where Americans go to find out the truth about hotels, motels and, horrors, bed and breakfasts. But the real joy of those sites is not so much the advice they offer, but the people who offer it. Reginald Edward Morse is one of those people. At first Morse seems exactly what you''d suspect a reviewer to be, though under the authoritative, even puffed-up tone, there lurks self-awareness, wit and a flair for anecdote. His reviews scatter clues to his identity, and the fragments explain the mystery of Reginald Edward Morse, his career as a motivational speaker, his lover ''K'' and his estrangement from his daughter. Always funny, unexpectedly tragic, this is a book of lonely rooms, long lists, of strong opinion and quiet confession, by one of America''s greatest novelists.