Imagine a precise, refined eye looking at all the grotesque realities of mall life in Middle America and youll have a sense of My Fathers Diet. Its as if the Joyce of Dubliners were looking at Akron. Edmund White, author of A Boys Own Story and A Saint from Texas Adrian Nathan West, one of our best translators, is also one of our best novelists. He gives such solemn care to such mundane American pap and crap even while denying any redemptive power to the effort and it's that denial sorrowful, but without anger, without delusion that constitutes his brilliance. My Father's Diet is among the most ruthlessly true chronicles of the culture of the patrimony that we, all of us, have ruined. Joshua Cohen -- Joshua Cohen Being mindful in America, West suggests, is not to invite wisdom, but to cultivate a boredom that turns even the nations lunacy into something as rote as weather. Jeremy Lybarge -- Jeremy Lybarge Wests dark, slim, emotionally precise debut novel isconsistently poised on a very narrow line between blackhearted contempt for these characters and comic mockery of them. But because he never slips off that line, he generates a certain affection for his characters, even if its clear how that body-transformation scheme is going to go. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Tender, sardonic, and endearingly grotesque, this coming-of-age body horror makes easy work of the heavy lifting. Publishers Weekly West has a sharp pen, capable of saying a lot with small details, and the characters feel like fully realised human beings. Joshua Rees, Buzz Wests writing is acute and at times brilliant. His descriptions of bodies that have been transformed into objects of devotion, especially, are luminous and imaginative, often humorous too . . . [ My Fathers Diet] is a book of subtle wit and poignancy, the scope of which is far greater than its brief length would suggest. Lamorna Ash, Literary Review * Literary Review * Our narrator is a product of malls, low-status jobs and faded dreams, and Wests wry, precise tone captures the monotony and inertia of his daily life. But what could have been a cruel satire is elevated by his empathy for his characters and an outlook thats compassionate rather than condescending. Alastair Mabbott, The Herald * The Herald * Compact and stirring, [ . . . My Fathers Diet] showcases the recognizable confusion of a changing world. Patrick Nathan, New York Times Book Review * New York Times Book Review * This debut offers an acute, painfully funny front-row view of a midlife crisis in action. Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal * Wall Street Journal * My Fathers Diet, Adrian Nathan Wests debut novel, is slim, sad, comic and sharply observed . . . Wests achievement, in this subtle and delightful book, is to have rendered failure in strikingly handsome terms. Christopher Shrimpton, The Guardian * The Guardian *
