Fiona Maazel. (2013). Woke Up Lonely: A Novel. Graywolf Press.

Fiona Maazel. 2013. Woke Up Lonely: A Novel. Graywolf Press.

Fiona Maazel, Woke Up Lonely: A Novel. Graywolf Press, 2013.

Fiona Maazel. Woke Up Lonely: A Novel. Graywolf Press, 2013.

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   • bioText: Fiona Maazel is the author of Last Last Chance and Woke Up Lonely. She is a winner of the Bard Prize for Fiction and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She teaches at Brooklyn College, Columbia, New York University, and Princeton. She lives in Brooklyn.
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Woke Up Lonely

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The dizzying new novel by Fiona Maazel, a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35"
* A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Kansas City Star, VICE, and Largehearted Boy Best Book of the Year * One of Book Riot's "Seven Funniest Novels of 2013" *
* One of the Millions's Most Anticipated Books of 2013 * An April IndieNext Pick*
Thurlow Dan is the founder of the Helix, a cult that promises to cure loneliness in the twenty-first century. With its communes and speed-dating, mixers and confession sessions, the Helix has become a national phenomenon—and attracted the attention of governments worldwide. But Thurlow, camped out in his Cincinnati headquarters, is lonely—for his ex-wife, Esme, and their daughter, whom he hasn't seen in ten years.
Esme, for her part, is a covert agent who has spent her life spying on Thurlow, mostly to protect him from the law. Now, with her superiors demanding results, she recruits four misfits to botch a reconnaissance mission in Cincinnati. But when Thurlow takes them hostage, he ignites a siege of the Helix House that will change all their lives forever.
With fiery, exuberant prose, Fiona Maazel takes us on a wild ride through North Korea's guarded interior and a city of vice beneath Cincinnati, a ride that twists and turns as it delves into an unsettled, off-kilter America. Woke Up Lonely is an original and deeply funny novel that explores our very human impulse to seek and repel intimacy with the people who matter to us most.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times Book Review
   • content:

     "Maazel's new novel sounds like an AM radio dial spinning between the spooky midnight frequency of 'V.' and the bizarro breakfast show humor of 'White Noise,' . . . Intricately imagined and timely. . . . Maazel is an entertaining writer with a dry, droll sense of humor . . . She's insightful about how and why we build up instead of tear down the walls between us."

2. • premium: False
   • source: Vanity Fair
   • content: "Brilliantly imagine[d]."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Cosmopolitan
   • content: "[A] fun farce."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Oprah.com, Book of the Week
   • content: "Maazel's insights are as sound as her imagination is wild."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Marie Claire
   • content: "It's as if a Paul Thomas Anderson movie (The Master, There Will Be Blood) married a David Foster Wallace novel and had a baby. Which is to say, this story is weird, thrilling, and inimitable."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Jane Ciabattari, NPR
   • content: "Woke Up Lonely is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, filled with swerves and contradictions. . . . Poignant and unpredictable."
7. • premium: False
   • source: USA Today
   • content: "The talented Maazel has plenty of imagination."
8. • premium: False
   • source: Salon
   • content: "Among the many sterling novels coming out this April . . . Woke Up Lonely [has] stood out."
9. • premium: False
   • source: The Daily Beast
   • content: "[Maazel] has a real talent for taking these existential millstones of modern life--fear of death, failure, being alone, everything--and filtering them into morbidly funny, troublingly familiar forms. . . . Woke Up Lonely easily refutes the idea that the novel is a staid, obsolete form of writing. The stakes in Maazel's book are at least as real as any work of nonfiction, and it's a good deal more fun to read than any manifesto."
10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      January 21, 2013
      Reviewed by Manuel Gonzales. Maazel’s sprawling and ambitious new novel (after Last Chance) follows the rise and fall of the Helix, a cult of the lonely who believe that true human connection can only arrive with full disclosure. Think Facebook and Twitter but without the pesky computers. Speed dates, rallies, and confession sessions abound, full of strangers accosting one another to divulge their deepest secrets and most closely held fears, all in the hope of stemming the overwhelming tide of loneliness that is modern existence. Shifting between Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, Ohio, Maazel’s novel pivots off the controversial 2000 presidential election, creating a fictional United States full of people ripe to band together in an ambiguous fight against loneliness and powerlessness. In the center of it all is Thurlow Dan, estranged from his wife and daughter, who began the Helix to fight his own solitude, but who, despite his hundreds of thousands of followers, remains the loneliest man on Earth. To make matters worse, branches of the Helix want armed revolution, the U.S. government has deemed Dan and the Helix public enemy number one, and in a desperate effort to win back Esme, his ex-wife, who is a covert CIA operative, Thurlow creates a hostage situation that threatens to bring everything tumbling down around him. Through all of this, Maazel casts herself into the lives of her characters, and it’s through these interludes that the novel obtains most of its heart. Through characters like Ned, who loved his chair “as it did not love him,” and Anne-Janet, survivor of cancer and sexual assault but forever alone and pining for love, Maazel mines disparate and singular modes of loneliness. At turns satiric and heartfelt, Maazel’s novel brims with energy and life. Her wit is dark and acerbic, contrasting sharply against the over-indulgent, over-telling philosophy of the Helix. At times, however, the Helix itself, large and unwieldy and difficult to imagine, becomes an elaborate and somewhat unnecessary set piece that threatens to overshadow what’s best about the novel and Maazel’s skills as a storyteller, namely her exploration of the different shades of loneliness. As one character claims, “just because the energies of the lonely tended to mobilize in vigilant and constant pursuit of an end to loneliness, that did not make their aggregate any less lame,” so, too, can the aggregate energies of Maazel feel somewhat misdirected when the novel returns its focus to the Helix. Regardless, Maazel manages to pair absurd situations and backgrounds with real fear and desire. Maazel shines when she backgrounds the Helix and the satiric elements of her story and penetrates the inner lives of her characters—Dan, Esme, their daughter, Ida, and four bumbling government agents—whose stories are rich and compelling. In those moments—and there are many of them—when she brings forward the doubts and faults of her characters, she shows these to be no less than our own, and then shows us, too, that their moments of triumph—however minor and fleeting, and no matter the obstacles that still stand in the way—can also be ours. Agent: Stacia Decker, Donald Maass Literary Agency. (Apr.) Manuel Gonzales is the author of The Miniature Wife and Other Stories.

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      January 15, 2013
      In this rollicking ride of a novel, Maazel explores a world of family, fame and forgiveness. One of the cures for "waking up lonely" is the Helix, sponsor of a number of services geared to help the legion of people experiencing loneliness in the 21st century. The founder of the Helix is Thurlow "Lo" Dan, whose mission has been to help those who feel companionless, though ironically, he's been feeling forsaken and isolated himself since the breakup of his marriage to Esme and his separation from his daughter, Ida. In one hilarious scene we learn of the Helix's strategy of "speed dating," in which potential partners come together for a few minutes to share a brief piece of who they are (responding to contrived prompts such as "My worst high school moment") in hopes of establishing a more lasting relationship. Despite such artificiality, the Helix has become something of a cult and is now drawing worldwide attention. Esme has been spying on Thurlow and comes up with a recon mission that, to say the least, devolves into a fiasco. In fact, he turns the tables on the motley group of operatives Esme has put together. In a number of touching flashbacks, we learn of the development of Lo and Esme's relationship. The narrative moves readers seamlessly from such unlikely places as the Helix's corporate headquarters in Cincinnati to the bleakness of North Korea. Maazel manages to strike a number of tones here--from poignant (all Lo wants is to get back with wife and daughter) to paranoid--and she's successful at every level.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      May 1, 2013
      

      Set in the grim near future, this dystopian novel from the author of Last Last Chance features Thurlow Dan, who is the founder and leader of the Helix, an international Scientology-like cult with headquarters in an underground city beneath Cincinnati. His ex-wife, Esme, is a covert spy with a penchant for disguises. The intricate plot culminates in a botched kidnapping and a siege of Helix House. North Korea figures prominently, too. But at the heart of the story is something more simple: Thurlow's loneliness and longing for Esme and their young daughter, Ida. VERDICT Maazel's wildly imaginative style isn't for everyone, and her humor may be lost on many readers. But this ambitious, wide-ranging novel should appeal to those who enjoy complex, edgy, and ironic literary fiction.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      May 27, 2013
      Thurlow Dan is the founder of Helix, a prominent cult that promises a cure for loneliness. But Dan has a problem: he is lonely—for his covert CIA agent ex-wife, Esme, who has spent much of her life spying on Dan in an effort to shield him from the police. But when one of Esme’s surveillance missions goes awry, Dan starts taking hostages. Maazel’s novel is enhanced by narrator Bernadette Dunne’s winning performance in this audio edition. With an older voice and slight rasp, Dunne offers up clear, clean narration. Equally important, her reading is well paced and demonstrates great timing. A Graywolf hardcover.

popularity

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The dizzying new novel by Fiona Maazel, a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35"
* A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Kansas City Star, VICE, and Largehearted Boy Best Book of the Year * One of Book Riot's "Seven Funniest Novels of 2013" *
* One of the Millions's Most Anticipated Books of 2013 * An April IndieNext Pick*
Thurlow Dan is the founder of the Helix, a cult that promises to cure loneliness in the twenty-first century. With its communes and speed-dating, mixers and confession sessions, the Helix has become a national phenomenon—and attracted the attention of governments worldwide. But Thurlow, camped out in his Cincinnati headquarters, is lonely—for his ex-wife, Esme, and their daughter, whom he hasn't seen in ten years.
Esme, for her part, is a covert agent who has spent her life spying on Thurlow, mostly to protect him from the...

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