From a Pulitzer Prize finalist comes a hilarious and heartbreaking
novel about a musician climbing back from rock bottom.
As winter deepens in snowbound Pollard, Illinois, thirty-something
Francis Falbo is holed up in his attic apartment, recovering from a
series of traumas: his mother's death, his beloved wife's desertion, and
his once-ascendant rock band's irreconcilable break-up. Francis hasn't
shaved in months, hasn't so much as changed out of his bathrobe-"the
uniform of a Life in Default"-for nine days.
Other than the agoraphobia that continues to hold him hostage, all he
has left is his childhood home, whose remaining rooms he rents to a cast
of eccentric tenants, including a pair of former circus performers whose
daughter has gone missing. The tight-knit community has already survived
a blizzard, but there is more danger in store for the citizens of
Pollard before summer arrives. Francis is himself caught up in these
troubles as he becomes increasingly entangled in the affairs of others,
with results that are by turns disastrous, hysterical, and ultimately
healing.
Fusing consummate wit with the seriousness attending an adulthood gone
awry, Rapp has written an uproarious and affecting novel about what we
do and where we go when our lives have crumbled around us. Sharp-edged
but tenderhearted, Know Your Beholder introduces us to one of the most
lovably flawed characters in recent fiction, a man at last able to
collect the jagged pieces of his dreams and begin anew, in both life and
love. Seldom have our foibles and our efforts to persevere in spite of
them been laid bare with such heart and hope.
