"An ambitious and warmhearted first novel" (Entertainment Weekly)
from Owen King--the epic tale of a young man coming to terms with his
life in the aftermath of the spectacularly bizarre failure of his first
film.****
SAM DOLAN is a young man coming to terms with his life in the process
and aftermath of making his first film. He has a difficult relationship
with his father, B-movie actor Booth Dolan--a boisterous, opinionated,
lying lothario whose screen legacy falls somewhere between cult hero and
pathetic. Allie, Sam's dearly departed mother, was a woman whose only
fault, in Sam's eyes, was her eternal affection for his father. Also
included in the cast of indelible characters: a precocious, frequently
violent half-sister; a conspiracy-theorist second wife; an
Internet-famous roommate; a contractor who can't stop expanding his
house; a happy-go-lucky college girlfriend and her husband, a retired
Yankees catcher; the morose producer of a true-crime show; and a
slouching indie-film legend. Not to mention a tragic sex monster.
Unraveling the tumultuous, decades-spanning story of the Dolan family's
friends, lovers, and adversaries, Double Feature is about letting go
of everything--regret, resentment, dignity, moving pictures, the
dead--and taking it again from the top. Against the backdrop of indie
filmmaking, college campus life, contemporary Brooklyn, and upstate New
York, Owen King's epic debut novel combines propulsive storytelling with
mordant wit and brims with a deep understanding of the trials of
ambition and art, of relationships and life, and of our attempts to
survive it all.
