Amity Gaige. (2013). Schroder: A Novel. Grand Central Publishing.

Amity Gaige. 2013. Schroder: A Novel. Grand Central Publishing.

Amity Gaige, Schroder: A Novel. Grand Central Publishing, 2013.

Amity Gaige. Schroder: A Novel. Grand Central Publishing, 2013.

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   • bioText: Amity Gaige is the author of Schroder and The Folded World. Her essays, articles, and stories have appeared in various publications, including the Yale Review, Los Angeles Times, O Magazine, The Literary Review, One Story and in a 2009 collection of essays, Feed Me (Random House). She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a McDowell Colony Fellowship, and a Baltic Writing Residency Fellowship, and is currently the Visiting Writer at Amherst College. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family.
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Schroder

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A lyrical and deeply affecting novel recounting the seven days a father spends on the road with his daughter after kidnapping her during a parental visit.
Attending a New England summer camp, young Eric Schroder-a first-generation East German immigrant-adopts the last name Kennedy to more easily fit in, a fateful white lie that will set him on an improbable and ultimately tragic course.
Schroder relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later to Lake Champlain, Vermont, with his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amid a heated custody battle with his wife, who will soon discover that her husband is not who he says he is. From a correctional facility, Eric surveys the course of his life to understand-and maybe even explain-his behavior: the painful separation from his mother in childhood; a harrowing escape to America with his taciturn father; a romance that withered under a shadow of lies; and his proudest moments and greatest regrets as a flawed but loving father.
Alternately lovesick and ecstatic, Amity Gaige's deftly imagined novel offers a profound meditation on history and fatherhood, and the many identities we take on in our lives—those we are born with and those we construct for ourselves.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The New Yorker
   • content: Complicated and nuanced . . . the novel is absorbing, with a propulsive plot and a narrator who is charming, ambivalent, and searching-a man driven by love who understands that love cannot save him.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom and The Corrections
   • content: The measure of Gaige's great gifts as a storyteller is that she persuades you to believe in a situation that shouldn't be believable, and to love a narrator who shouldn't be lovable. Seldom has such a daring concept for a novel been grounded in such an appealing character.
3. • premium: False
   • source: Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
   • content: In Schroder, Amity Gaige explores the rich, murky realm where parental devotion edges into mania, and logic crabwalks into crime. This offbeat, exquisitely written novel showcases a fresh, forceful young voice in American letters.
4. • premium: False
   • source: David Bezmozgis, prize-winning author of Natasha and Other Stories and The Free World
   • content: Amity Gaige has written a flawless book. It does not contain a single false note. Playful and inventive, Schroder movingly depicts the ways we confound our own hearts—how even with the best intentions, we fail to love those closest to us as well as we wish we could. Eric Schroder should take his place among the most charismatic and memorable characters in contemporary fiction, and Amity Gaige her place among the most talented and impressive writers working today.
5. • premium: False
   • source: Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, and the New York Times best-selling short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here
   • content: You will not want to put this book down. You will want to read it in one big gulp. This is a bullet of a novel, aimed at our pieties about parenthood and familial love. You won't soon forget Schroder or his daughter or the sentences that bring them to life. To those who know Gaige's first two novels, it's no surprise she's produced another stunner. To those who don't, you're in for a treat.
6. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: Quiet and deeply introspective . . . Tender moments of observation, regret and joy - all conveyed in unself-consciously lyrical prose - result in a radiant meditation on identity, memory and familial love and loss.
7. • premium: False
   • source: New York Times Book Review on The Folded World
   • content: In this tightly-written and emotionally satisfying novel, a young couple's marriage is thrown into jeopardy by the husband's workaholic tendencies... [Gaige] is extraordinarily adept at revealing her characters' personalities in just a few words... Stirring.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Entertainment Weekly on The Folded World
   • content: The bitterness and disillusion of marriage have been thoroughly plumbed in contemporary fiction; Gaige is one of the rare novelists who is more interested in its potential for happiness and grace. A-.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus on O My Darling
   • content: Love, marriage, and the whole damn thing-all spanned in a witty, tender first novel. With a flavor of Lorrie Moore, graceful, bright, modern writing.
10. • premium: False
    • source: Los Angeles Times on O My Darling
    • content: Utterly devourable...gently, and beautifully unfolds, like a gauzy curtain in an open window.
11. • premium: False
    • source: Publisher's Weekly on O My Darling
    • content: Sparkles and delights...crystalline insights into the nature of love and flashes of narrative brilliance.
12. • premium: False
    • source: Chicago Tribune (Favorite Books of 2007)
    • content: The Folded World will appeal to readers who like to dive into the muck of internal and interpersonal conflicts, and break the surface with breath born of insight and empathy. Amity Gaige's second novel lives up to the reputation she earned with her first one, as an original, compelling voice.
13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      October 22, 2012
      Gaige (The Folded World) revisits the fragility of family life in her newest, based broadly on the Clark Rockefeller child custody kidnapping case. The book—written as an apology (in both the Socratic and emotional sense) to the narrator’s ex-wife as he awaits trial—is quiet and deeply introspective. Erik Schroder was born in East Berlin, but escaped with his father to working-class Boston. Recreating himself as Eric Kennedy, raised in a fictional town by a patrician family, the narrator distances himself from his past to gain entrée into American aristocracy. But his marriage—based on lies—goes sour, and in the midst of the resultant unfavorable custody arrangement, Eric takes his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, on an unsanctioned road trip through New England, seizing the opportunity to reconnect with her, even as he realizes that this idyllic time is as illusory as his past. Although Eric is often unreliable, Gaige conjures a groundswell of sympathy for an otherwise repugnant character. Tender moments of observation, regret, and joy—all conveyed in unself-consciously lyrical prose—result in a radiant meditation on identity, memory, and familial love and loss. Agent: Wendy Weil, the Wendy Weil Agency.

14. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from September 1, 2012
      A man's collapsed marriage and growing madness imperils his young daughter in this bracing third novel by Gaige (The Folded World, 2007, etc.). Narrator Eric Kennedy makes clear early on that he's done something very wrong: At the behest of his lawyers, he's writing his ex-wife to explain why he disappeared with their six-year-old daughter, Meadow, for a week. Like many unreliable narrators before him, he's bathing in narcissism and has a hard time facing facts, but Gaige makes the discovery process at once harrowing and fascinating. Eric escaped from East Germany with his father as a child and changed his name (from Erik Schroder, hence the title). As an adult, he was a caring husband and father, but his erratic behavior (like keeping a dead fox in the backyard as a kind of science project for Meadow) sunk the marriage, and his limited visitation rights prompted him to effectively kidnap Meadow and take her on an extended tour of upstate New York and New England. Abductors are hard to make sympathetic, but Gaige potently renders the embittered fun-house logic of a man who's lost his bearings. ("There was nothing in our parental agreement that said I couldn't drive around the outskirts of Albany at high speeds.") Gaige is interested in what widens and closes the gaps in our personalities between the past and present, madness and sanity, and she expertly works the theme like an accordion player until the climax, when Meadow is truly endangered, and Eric has a moment of clarity. The concluding plot turns are bluntly deus ex machina, and some characters, such as the aging muse for an '80s pop hit, hit the split personality theme in an obvious way, but overall the storytelling is remarkably poised. Smart, comic, unsettling, yet strangely of a piece--not unlike its disarming lead character.

      COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

15. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 1, 2012
      

      First-generation East German immigrant Erik Schroder renames himself Erik Kennedy, an act that proves fateful decades later when he holes up with his daughter during a pitched custody battle with his estranged wife. From a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Outstanding Emerging Novelist; booming in-house enthusiasm.

      Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

16. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      November 1, 2012
      In a letter to his estranged wife, Erik Schroder pleads for mercy and understanding, as he attempts to explain the recent, unsanctioned trip he has taken with his young daughter, Meadow. Woven throughout the novel is Erik's personal history. Originally from East Germany, during his teenage years Erik becomes convinced that he does not fit in with his peer group and creates a new, Americanized identity, calling himself Eric Kennedy. This ruse lasts for many years, through college, a marriage, a semisuccessful career, and fatherhood. However, in the midst of a heated custody battle, Erik slowly becomes unhinged and makes a grave mistake that results in the unraveling of his elaborate secret. Gaige creates a fascinating and complex character in Erik, as he moves from the eccentric and slightly irresponsible father to a desperate man at the end of his rope. While the novel's format occasionally lends itself to overly dramatic prose, this does not take away from its warmth and expert exploration of the immigrant experience, alienation, and the unbreakable bond between parent and child.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

17. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 29, 2013
      The success or failure of the audio edition of a deeply interior novel hinges on the quality of its narrator, and in this case Will Collyer does not disappoint. He beautifully captures the complexity of the novel’s antihero, Eric Kennedy aka Eric Schroder. In a youthful attempt to remake his life, Eric fabricates a history and a name for himself—that name being Kennedy and that history involving distant kinship with the Hyannis Port Kennedys. Sticking with his fake identity into adulthood and through marriage, it’s only a matter of time before the house of cards begins to fall. Because Collyer is so effective in his portrayal of Eric, it’s easy for listeners to be taken in by the character. Listeners will want to believe him—even root for him. Eric’s narcissism knows no bounds, and his choices lead to disaster. As voiced by Collyer, this compelling character is fully believable, even as he slides into darkness. A Twelve paperback.

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A lyrical and deeply affecting novel recounting the seven days a father spends on the road with his daughter after kidnapping her during a parental visit.
Attending a New England summer camp, young Eric Schroder-a first-generation East German immigrant-adopts the last name Kennedy to more easily fit in, a fateful white lie that will set him on an improbable and ultimately tragic course.
Schroder relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later to Lake Champlain, Vermont, with his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amid a heated custody battle with his wife, who will soon discover that her husband is not who he says he is. From a correctional facility, Eric surveys the course of his life to understand-and maybe even explain-his behavior: the painful separation from his mother in childhood; a harrowing escape to America with his taciturn father; a romance that withered under a shadow of lies; and his proudest moments and...

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