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Das Ehespiel
New York: Der Dichter Harry ist seit dreißig Jahren mit Luz verheiratet. Sie haben zwei erwachsene Kinder, einen großen Freundeskreis und lieben ihr Brooklyner Apartment. Als Luz eines Tages in Harrys Notizen blättert und auf Gedichte über eine andere Frau stößt, ist sie davon überzeugt, dass er sie betrügt. Obwohl Harry unschuldig ist, wirft sie ihn aus der Wohnung und dem gemeinsamen Leben. Harry ist fassungslos. Er versucht, zu Luz durchzudringen, doch schnell beschleicht ihn das surreale Gefühl, dass sie sich trotz dreißig gemeinsamer Ehejahre völlig fremd sind. Kate Christensen bewegt sich virtuos auf der Klaviatur der Charakterzeichnung und entwirft das scharfzüngige, lakonische und anrührende Portrait einer New Yorker Ehe.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published June 14, 2011
66 people are currently reading
1493 people want to read
About the author
Kate Christensen
19 books426 followersKATE CHRISTENSEN is the author of eleven novels, most recently The Arizona Triangle (as Sydney Graves) and Good Company. She has also published two food-centric memoirs. Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. She lives in northern New Mexico with her husband and their two dogs.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 238 reviews
November 3, 2011
Quite frankly, this book left me thinking, "Who cares?" Harry is a 57-year-old man who has just been kicked out by his wife. He spends the next 300 pages documenting how he hangs out around the city, gets a job, gets fired, gets another job, and hangs out around the city some more. His wife comes off as mentally unstable, and he comes off as a self-righteous, depressing man in a mid-life crisis.
The story I was looking forward to was that of his son, Hector, who has recently joined a religious cult. The inside cover stated that Harry, along with his daughter Karina, a lesbian atheist who spends her time picking up second hand items from the trash and giving them to the poor, attempt to extract Hector from said cult. This sounded like an interesting story filled with colorful and unique characters. That plot took up about two chapters, and the rest of the nearly 30 chapters were about Harry walking around and doing basically nothing.
Basically, Kate Christensen had a good plot with good characters, but chose instead to focus on the most boring guy and his lack of a plot. I regret having ever picked up this book, because it was an immense waste of my time.
The story I was looking forward to was that of his son, Hector, who has recently joined a religious cult. The inside cover stated that Harry, along with his daughter Karina, a lesbian atheist who spends her time picking up second hand items from the trash and giving them to the poor, attempt to extract Hector from said cult. This sounded like an interesting story filled with colorful and unique characters. That plot took up about two chapters, and the rest of the nearly 30 chapters were about Harry walking around and doing basically nothing.
Basically, Kate Christensen had a good plot with good characters, but chose instead to focus on the most boring guy and his lack of a plot. I regret having ever picked up this book, because it was an immense waste of my time.
December 4, 2013
It doesn’t matter if the story is about 12th-century nuns or lizard-people from the planet Zerlock: During the question-and-answer portion of the author reading at your local bookstore, some loyal fan will stand up and ask, “How much of this novel is autobiographical?”
I like to look closely at authors’ faces when that question comes — and it always comes — to catch the flash of irritation just before they wearily explain that fiction writers actually use their imaginations to create characters and situations, etc., etc.
“Yes,” the loyal fan persists, “but isn’t this narrator you?”
Long after the last climate-change denier is burned to a crisp and the final doubter of Shakespeare’s identity exits stage right, certain readers will still cling to their conviction that writers can’t really make up stories. Deny it all you want: It’s all memoir; it’s all roman a clef.
That’s an accusation Harry Quirk can’t dodge. He’s the jinxed narrator at the center of Kate Christensen’s engaging new novel, “The Astral.” When his wife, Luz, discovers a new collection of love poems in his notebook, she knows he must be having an affair. “She was vengeance incarnate,” Harry thinks, later telling her that she’s “a controlling, closed-off, lethally angry bitch.” She rips up the pages and throws his computer out the window. “It’s poetry,” Harry pleads. “It’s invented. All the women I was writing to are imaginary.” But Luz won’t hear it; she kicks him out of their apartment. And so, for the first time in 30 years, Harry is on the street, an unemployed writer, 57 years old, with no money and no place to live. What’s worse, he can’t remember any of those unpublished sonnets that Luz destroyed in her “toxic rage.”
It’s worth noting that Christensen has somehow — again — created a captivatingly believable male narrator, although she can’t see 60 on the horizon (she’s 48), has not been married to a tempestuous Mexican woman for 30 years or published largely ignored poetry in academic journals. (Her previous novel, “The Great Man,” won the PEN/Faulkner Award.) And yet here she is doing what talented novelists do: creating a voice so rich with the peculiar timbre of lived experience that you feel as though she’s introduced you to a witty, deeply frustrated (and frustrating) new friend.
Harry is a brilliantly realized species of the domesticated male, the product of “years of conditioning by the prevailing social winds.” In the company of other men, he jokes “with a funny kind of pride about how demanding and bossy our wives were, how in thrall we were to the domestic tyranny of children and schedules.” Feeling castrated and spineless, he’s full of appetites that he keeps well tamed: He notices women’s breasts but knows he mustn’t stare; he’s attracted to young women but knows they’re off-limits. He’s full of “inchoate fears, secret woes, and unspoken furies.” Even as a poet, he’s tightly hemmed in, forcing himself to work within the constraints of the traditional sonnet form. No magic for him. “I was not an ecstatic or a mystic,” he says. “I was stuck on the ground, scratching my ass or whatever else itched.”
“The Astral” is largely a rumination on marriage, wise enough to inform anyone who’s been at it a while but maybe too dark for kids just starting off. As Harry rides his bicycle around Brooklyn — wonderfully drawn here — he reflects on what went wrong in his home. He did have an affair 12 years ago, and ever since he’s had “a scarlet P on [his] forehead — for Philanderer, alas, not Pimpernel.” But he always assumed their shared experience was enough to keep Luz — “my fellow grizzled veteran of the same wars — and him together till the end. “Through the decades, things had gotten dirty between us,” he admits, “corrupted by familiarity, the pain we caused each other on purpose and by accident, our blind spots, all the things we couldn’t say or see. By now, I felt so many complicated, ancient, powerful things for and about Luz, a mishmash of memories and associations and anger and irritation and physical knowledge and attachment and blind habit and nostalgia and dependency and intertwined roots, I wasn’t sure it could all be lumped together as love or any other one word.”
Swinging between ribald confession and thoughtful reflection with a hair shirt grafted to his torso, Harry is an endlessly engaging coroner of his relationship with Luz, that “one-woman fascistic government,” but the novel rounds out its exploration of marriage with several other curious couplings. He and his best female friend wonder why they never had that affair that Harry’s wife assumes they’ve been having. His male friends seem locked in cold, competitive marriages, and his own adult children aren’t at all interested in the matrimonial model their parents pursued: His daughter, a lesbian freegan, seems too serious for romance, while his wastrel son is caught up in a religious cult that uses love as a con.
Those side stories dress up the plot, but the heart of the novel remains Harry working out his own salvation, trying to figure out in late middle age what it means to be a man, a married man, a selfish man, a thoughtful, good man — roles that many of us are trying to play all at once.
If only Nixon could go to China, perhaps only a female author could create such a sympathetic male narrator trying to placate his harridan of a wife. (There’s a poisonous female therapist here, too, “a stuck-up stone-faced shamanistic manipulator.”) Imagine the blowback that Updike, Irving or Roth would have suffered — have suffered! — for lines like this:
“That was marriage, sometimes. Wives got their husbands under control and kept them there. That was how they operated, these possessive, manipulative, needy, controlling women, they pretended to be soft and vulnerable, sweet and loving, and we, big dumb dogs that we were, fell for their cooing flattery and breasty softness, tried to be the heroes they wanted us to be, to live up to their expectations. And when we failed and our wives lashed out, we skulked around, tails between legs, hangdog and furtive, doing their bidding until they forgave us, if they did.”
That’s not Christensen speaking through a mask, ironically or otherwise. That’s a passionate, sexist, loving, complex man named Harry Quirk. Alive, like us. Go meet him.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...
I like to look closely at authors’ faces when that question comes — and it always comes — to catch the flash of irritation just before they wearily explain that fiction writers actually use their imaginations to create characters and situations, etc., etc.
“Yes,” the loyal fan persists, “but isn’t this narrator you?”
Long after the last climate-change denier is burned to a crisp and the final doubter of Shakespeare’s identity exits stage right, certain readers will still cling to their conviction that writers can’t really make up stories. Deny it all you want: It’s all memoir; it’s all roman a clef.
That’s an accusation Harry Quirk can’t dodge. He’s the jinxed narrator at the center of Kate Christensen’s engaging new novel, “The Astral.” When his wife, Luz, discovers a new collection of love poems in his notebook, she knows he must be having an affair. “She was vengeance incarnate,” Harry thinks, later telling her that she’s “a controlling, closed-off, lethally angry bitch.” She rips up the pages and throws his computer out the window. “It’s poetry,” Harry pleads. “It’s invented. All the women I was writing to are imaginary.” But Luz won’t hear it; she kicks him out of their apartment. And so, for the first time in 30 years, Harry is on the street, an unemployed writer, 57 years old, with no money and no place to live. What’s worse, he can’t remember any of those unpublished sonnets that Luz destroyed in her “toxic rage.”
It’s worth noting that Christensen has somehow — again — created a captivatingly believable male narrator, although she can’t see 60 on the horizon (she’s 48), has not been married to a tempestuous Mexican woman for 30 years or published largely ignored poetry in academic journals. (Her previous novel, “The Great Man,” won the PEN/Faulkner Award.) And yet here she is doing what talented novelists do: creating a voice so rich with the peculiar timbre of lived experience that you feel as though she’s introduced you to a witty, deeply frustrated (and frustrating) new friend.
Harry is a brilliantly realized species of the domesticated male, the product of “years of conditioning by the prevailing social winds.” In the company of other men, he jokes “with a funny kind of pride about how demanding and bossy our wives were, how in thrall we were to the domestic tyranny of children and schedules.” Feeling castrated and spineless, he’s full of appetites that he keeps well tamed: He notices women’s breasts but knows he mustn’t stare; he’s attracted to young women but knows they’re off-limits. He’s full of “inchoate fears, secret woes, and unspoken furies.” Even as a poet, he’s tightly hemmed in, forcing himself to work within the constraints of the traditional sonnet form. No magic for him. “I was not an ecstatic or a mystic,” he says. “I was stuck on the ground, scratching my ass or whatever else itched.”
“The Astral” is largely a rumination on marriage, wise enough to inform anyone who’s been at it a while but maybe too dark for kids just starting off. As Harry rides his bicycle around Brooklyn — wonderfully drawn here — he reflects on what went wrong in his home. He did have an affair 12 years ago, and ever since he’s had “a scarlet P on [his] forehead — for Philanderer, alas, not Pimpernel.” But he always assumed their shared experience was enough to keep Luz — “my fellow grizzled veteran of the same wars — and him together till the end. “Through the decades, things had gotten dirty between us,” he admits, “corrupted by familiarity, the pain we caused each other on purpose and by accident, our blind spots, all the things we couldn’t say or see. By now, I felt so many complicated, ancient, powerful things for and about Luz, a mishmash of memories and associations and anger and irritation and physical knowledge and attachment and blind habit and nostalgia and dependency and intertwined roots, I wasn’t sure it could all be lumped together as love or any other one word.”
Swinging between ribald confession and thoughtful reflection with a hair shirt grafted to his torso, Harry is an endlessly engaging coroner of his relationship with Luz, that “one-woman fascistic government,” but the novel rounds out its exploration of marriage with several other curious couplings. He and his best female friend wonder why they never had that affair that Harry’s wife assumes they’ve been having. His male friends seem locked in cold, competitive marriages, and his own adult children aren’t at all interested in the matrimonial model their parents pursued: His daughter, a lesbian freegan, seems too serious for romance, while his wastrel son is caught up in a religious cult that uses love as a con.
Those side stories dress up the plot, but the heart of the novel remains Harry working out his own salvation, trying to figure out in late middle age what it means to be a man, a married man, a selfish man, a thoughtful, good man — roles that many of us are trying to play all at once.
If only Nixon could go to China, perhaps only a female author could create such a sympathetic male narrator trying to placate his harridan of a wife. (There’s a poisonous female therapist here, too, “a stuck-up stone-faced shamanistic manipulator.”) Imagine the blowback that Updike, Irving or Roth would have suffered — have suffered! — for lines like this:
“That was marriage, sometimes. Wives got their husbands under control and kept them there. That was how they operated, these possessive, manipulative, needy, controlling women, they pretended to be soft and vulnerable, sweet and loving, and we, big dumb dogs that we were, fell for their cooing flattery and breasty softness, tried to be the heroes they wanted us to be, to live up to their expectations. And when we failed and our wives lashed out, we skulked around, tails between legs, hangdog and furtive, doing their bidding until they forgave us, if they did.”
That’s not Christensen speaking through a mask, ironically or otherwise. That’s a passionate, sexist, loving, complex man named Harry Quirk. Alive, like us. Go meet him.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...
June 19, 2011
Author Kate Christensen seems to specialize in writing novels about people you would never in a thousand years want to spend any time with if you met them in real life. So what kind of voodoo writer magic has to happen for an author to make you enjoy a book even though you dislike the main character? Beats me but Kate Christensen has it. Read The Epicure's Lament or Jeremy Thrane or The Great Man. Don't however read her newest novel, The Astral and expect the same magic. The Astral is the story of a weak and complaining middle aged man's autopsy of his marriage, when he isn't begging his wife to take him back. It sounds like a phone call you would try to dodge not a novel you would want to read.
Harry Quick is a 57 year old poet living in Brooklyn with his wife of 30 years, Luz. When Luz discovers a new collection of poems in his notebooks she is convinced that Harry is having an affair. Harry did have an affair once but that was twelve years ago and he and Luz worked past it. His poems are always about women, this is writing not an affair. Still, Luz kicks him out and destroys the new poems. Now Harry is a 57 year old homeless poet. As he bicycles around his gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood trying to remember the new poems, sponging off people for places to sleep he ruminates on what went wrong in his marriage and his life.
Harry's story or rather Harry's thoughts are interrupted by drinking, a couple jobs, his interactions with his two adult children, some friends and the characters of his neighborhood. The citizens of Harry World are interesting people. Although they are not crucial to the plot because there isn't one, they do offer respite from Harry's boring me, me, me. Ultimately as engaging as these characters are, they are nothing more than examples of some of the other choices good and bad that people make.
The Astral is a very long short story in which tedious whining rules the day. Too bad.
Harry Quick is a 57 year old poet living in Brooklyn with his wife of 30 years, Luz. When Luz discovers a new collection of poems in his notebooks she is convinced that Harry is having an affair. Harry did have an affair once but that was twelve years ago and he and Luz worked past it. His poems are always about women, this is writing not an affair. Still, Luz kicks him out and destroys the new poems. Now Harry is a 57 year old homeless poet. As he bicycles around his gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood trying to remember the new poems, sponging off people for places to sleep he ruminates on what went wrong in his marriage and his life.
Harry's story or rather Harry's thoughts are interrupted by drinking, a couple jobs, his interactions with his two adult children, some friends and the characters of his neighborhood. The citizens of Harry World are interesting people. Although they are not crucial to the plot because there isn't one, they do offer respite from Harry's boring me, me, me. Ultimately as engaging as these characters are, they are nothing more than examples of some of the other choices good and bad that people make.
The Astral is a very long short story in which tedious whining rules the day. Too bad.
May 29, 2012
I guess I just don't have any empathy for poets and their shitty marriages.
June 14, 2011
I interviewed Kate Christensen for The Millions:
http://www.themillions.com/2011/06/th...
http://www.themillions.com/2011/06/th...
August 6, 2011
In 1975, the world was overrun with infants named Christine or Kiersten or Kristen. At least this is how my mom imagined it. My dad, in a fit of divine improvisation, plucked a variation out of the sky. He invented the name Christa. He just made it up. Took two syllables, rammed them together and bam a name -- according to family lore.
Strangers marveled at it. Relatives older than 50 bumbled it. (Even my dad eventually misspelled it on a permission slip). And for six years I was the only Christa on my planet. Then on the first day of first grade in a tiny classroom in a tiny school, there was Christa S. She was a colorful Christa who, born in a more now era she would probably have a prescription to snort Ritalin off the school nurse's thigh before recess.
Technically, my dad still could have invented the name. She was a few months younger than me.
Regardless of the crowd of Christas in Mrs. Carr's class, it was still an unusual name not found on magnets, pencils, mini decorative license plates or mugs, which meant the name didn't exist in the same was as, say, Katie or Kelly. I searched every corner of every card shop and T-shirt hut at the mall. Lots of variations. Never a Christa. I had to spell it for people, twice. "No, C-H," I'd say. Even now it bleeds into my last name for a garbled finale: "Crystal Waller?" "No."
In the mid-1980s, Billy Joel's album "An Innocent Man" included a track called "Christie Lee." It's not his most famous song. It was never a single. It seems to have been written for his then Uptown Girl Christie Brinkley. Spelling aside, this was better than 100 Christa rainbow stickers and 100 pieces of Christa stationary. It sounded like he was singing "Christa Leigh, Christa Leigh." Just like me.
There is a Christa in Kate Christensen's novel "The Astral." She's the blonde pseudo-guru. She's the leader of what seems to be a religious cult. She is described in a mish-mash of unflattering ways. She's been imprisoned for fraud. She's hoodwinked and bilked. She has convinced the protagonist's 20-something son that he is the chosen one and she's decided to marry him. She's not smart. She's a surfer girl. She can't be trusted. And every time she was described in the book, I read the sentence like it was born in a fortune cookie.
She's a minor character. But I'm still a little bit 8, pointing at someone with the same name and looking around to see if anyone else noticed.
Aside from that, "The Astral" lives up to its billing as a summer read.
Harry Quirk is an old-school poet who hasn't done much in recent years. His fiery wife Lux kicks him out of their home because she suspects he has been diddling his longtime best friend, who is recently widowed. He actually hasn't been, but since he has had an indiscretion in his past there is no way to convince Lux otherwise.
So he couch-surfs and apartment hops. He tries to convince her that she has misread the evidence, a book of his poetry he is working on that she thinks is an admission of guilt. In the meantime, his freegan daughter is playing intermediary and his son Hector has fallen in with a cult-like group of religious fanatics -- led by Christa.
This book is just okay.
The character of Harry feels incomplete and a bit of a contradiction to himself. He's billed as bossed and berated, but seems to have these outbursts that are incongruent with that image. At one point he has a conversation with his exwife that is very hostile, aggressive that is probably supposed to be cathartic, but just kind of makes his "growth process" into something ugly and snarling and hard to root for.
His daughter Karina is a playground worth of potential, but her freegan lifestyle isn't really explored and instead she just plays this sort of flat voice of reason, void of any imperfection. And Hector's foray into an Oz-style of religious figure is a strange direction for this fanatical bible banger to lean.
Strangers marveled at it. Relatives older than 50 bumbled it. (Even my dad eventually misspelled it on a permission slip). And for six years I was the only Christa on my planet. Then on the first day of first grade in a tiny classroom in a tiny school, there was Christa S. She was a colorful Christa who, born in a more now era she would probably have a prescription to snort Ritalin off the school nurse's thigh before recess.
Technically, my dad still could have invented the name. She was a few months younger than me.
Regardless of the crowd of Christas in Mrs. Carr's class, it was still an unusual name not found on magnets, pencils, mini decorative license plates or mugs, which meant the name didn't exist in the same was as, say, Katie or Kelly. I searched every corner of every card shop and T-shirt hut at the mall. Lots of variations. Never a Christa. I had to spell it for people, twice. "No, C-H," I'd say. Even now it bleeds into my last name for a garbled finale: "Crystal Waller?" "No."
In the mid-1980s, Billy Joel's album "An Innocent Man" included a track called "Christie Lee." It's not his most famous song. It was never a single. It seems to have been written for his then Uptown Girl Christie Brinkley. Spelling aside, this was better than 100 Christa rainbow stickers and 100 pieces of Christa stationary. It sounded like he was singing "Christa Leigh, Christa Leigh." Just like me.
There is a Christa in Kate Christensen's novel "The Astral." She's the blonde pseudo-guru. She's the leader of what seems to be a religious cult. She is described in a mish-mash of unflattering ways. She's been imprisoned for fraud. She's hoodwinked and bilked. She has convinced the protagonist's 20-something son that he is the chosen one and she's decided to marry him. She's not smart. She's a surfer girl. She can't be trusted. And every time she was described in the book, I read the sentence like it was born in a fortune cookie.
She's a minor character. But I'm still a little bit 8, pointing at someone with the same name and looking around to see if anyone else noticed.
Aside from that, "The Astral" lives up to its billing as a summer read.
Harry Quirk is an old-school poet who hasn't done much in recent years. His fiery wife Lux kicks him out of their home because she suspects he has been diddling his longtime best friend, who is recently widowed. He actually hasn't been, but since he has had an indiscretion in his past there is no way to convince Lux otherwise.
So he couch-surfs and apartment hops. He tries to convince her that she has misread the evidence, a book of his poetry he is working on that she thinks is an admission of guilt. In the meantime, his freegan daughter is playing intermediary and his son Hector has fallen in with a cult-like group of religious fanatics -- led by Christa.
This book is just okay.
The character of Harry feels incomplete and a bit of a contradiction to himself. He's billed as bossed and berated, but seems to have these outbursts that are incongruent with that image. At one point he has a conversation with his exwife that is very hostile, aggressive that is probably supposed to be cathartic, but just kind of makes his "growth process" into something ugly and snarling and hard to root for.
His daughter Karina is a playground worth of potential, but her freegan lifestyle isn't really explored and instead she just plays this sort of flat voice of reason, void of any imperfection. And Hector's foray into an Oz-style of religious figure is a strange direction for this fanatical bible banger to lean.
July 6, 2011
This wonderful novel has many of the same basic elements as The Epicure's Dilemma by the same author. Again, Kate Christensen gets inside a very male mind and makes the reader believe in him. There's a lot of humor in this basically frustrating and unhappy story—a quality that makes all the difference to me because it adds a dimension that is, in my experience, so much a part of real life except in the very worst situations, which can't be redeemed no matter what. And although we get the entire story from one side, about halfway through the author somehow manages to make us start wondering intensely what the other side is, while keeping us pretty firmly rooted in the protagonist's shoes. That issue lasts to the very last sentence and beyond. It's such an effective handling of one saga in the casebook of divorce. The subplot involving the son is also beautifully done.
August 6, 2011
After living in the old, genteel building in Brooklyn throughout his marriage, Harry Quirk has come to take his life there for granted. But throughout his thirty year marriage to Luz, there have been turbulent shifts beneath the seemingly placid surface of their union that have finally broken through and disrupted the balance. Luz has kicked Harry out, accusing him of infidelity with his friend Marion, and despite his innocence, she will not hear anything that challenges her strong belief system.
As Harry struggles to manage his life on the "outside" of The Astral, while searching for anything and everything that can somehow redeem him in Luz's eyes and allow him back into the marriage and the home, he gradually begins to form a new kind of life for himself.
Meanwhile, grown children Karina and Hector grab Harry's attention, with their lifestyle choices and the dissonance created by their values.
I enjoyed immersing myself into the Brooklyn world of these characters, feeling as though the streets they walked and the neighborhood haunts they visited were vivid and real enough to be part of my own world...at least for awhile.
What unexpected moments suddenly illuminate Harry and help him face up to the path he must take? And how does he finally confront the differences between himself and Luz enough to let go of the failed dream?
Told in the first person narration of Harry, "The Astral: A Novel" offered a realistic portrayal of life from his perspective. I could feel his angst, his concerns, and see, through his eyes, the realizations he reached.
Five stars.
As Harry struggles to manage his life on the "outside" of The Astral, while searching for anything and everything that can somehow redeem him in Luz's eyes and allow him back into the marriage and the home, he gradually begins to form a new kind of life for himself.
Meanwhile, grown children Karina and Hector grab Harry's attention, with their lifestyle choices and the dissonance created by their values.
I enjoyed immersing myself into the Brooklyn world of these characters, feeling as though the streets they walked and the neighborhood haunts they visited were vivid and real enough to be part of my own world...at least for awhile.
What unexpected moments suddenly illuminate Harry and help him face up to the path he must take? And how does he finally confront the differences between himself and Luz enough to let go of the failed dream?
Told in the first person narration of Harry, "The Astral: A Novel" offered a realistic portrayal of life from his perspective. I could feel his angst, his concerns, and see, through his eyes, the realizations he reached.
Five stars.
August 16, 2011
Enjoyed, but wouldn't recommend. It was the kind of book that captured my attention while I was reading it, but quickly left my thoughts after I put it back on my bookshelf (part of the reason I'm trying out Good Reads). One thing I did enjoy is how she plays with the narrator, Harry, to so completely manipulate our interpretation of events.
I'm a fan of realism (especially after reading a novel like The Tiger's Wife or Swamplandia!) but I have to agree with what Daniel Handler said in the Sunday Book Review (although not to the extent he expresses in the final paragraph).
Reading Maud Newton's interview with Kate Christensen after the fact was definitely an added bonus. I especially liked where she spoke about writing from a male perspective as I'm always intrigued by authors who write from the perspective of a sex other than their own. Christensen's essay for Largehearted Boy (with a Spotify playlist) was also really fun.
I'm a fan of realism (especially after reading a novel like The Tiger's Wife or Swamplandia!) but I have to agree with what Daniel Handler said in the Sunday Book Review (although not to the extent he expresses in the final paragraph).
Reading Maud Newton's interview with Kate Christensen after the fact was definitely an added bonus. I especially liked where she spoke about writing from a male perspective as I'm always intrigued by authors who write from the perspective of a sex other than their own. Christensen's essay for Largehearted Boy (with a Spotify playlist) was also really fun.
June 7, 2019
I was entirely prepared to dislike this book, and nearly put it aside several times in the first one hundred pages feeling, as another reviewer put it, "Who cares?" I disliked the narrator. I found him pretentious and insufferable. But, for reasons I am still not entirely clear about, I stuck with this book, and somewhere around the halfway point, I realized that some of the passages were downright brilliant, truly 5 star writing, and I was only able to appreciate their brilliance because I'd been willing to stick around for the onerous first many chapters. Unfortunately, these brilliant passages would often be followed by another less than amazing section, but I was now curious enough to stick around. It all averaged out to a 4 star read ultimately.
I am fascinated with Kate Christensen's writing after this and the one other book of hers my library owns, The Last Cruise. That book was an exhaustive description of the food and decor and inner workings of a cruise ship bound for disaster, but she kept all of the characters at arm's length and I never really felt I knew or cared about any of them. The Astral showed me that she can take the reader inside the characters' heads and relationships with uncomfortable precision, dissecting them the same way she did the menu on the cruise ship in The Last Cruise, although at times it still felt more like a tongue in cheek intellectual exercise than a immersive emotional involvement with the characters.
My favorite parts may have been My final comment is that I don't particularly appreciate the sexual commentary, either in this novel or her other. Regardless of if it's supposed to be coming from a man, woman, elderly, young, whatever, it always sounds like adults conversing at the level of junior high kids about sex to me. Not a deal breaker, but irritating.
I am fascinated with Kate Christensen's writing after this and the one other book of hers my library owns, The Last Cruise. That book was an exhaustive description of the food and decor and inner workings of a cruise ship bound for disaster, but she kept all of the characters at arm's length and I never really felt I knew or cared about any of them. The Astral showed me that she can take the reader inside the characters' heads and relationships with uncomfortable precision, dissecting them the same way she did the menu on the cruise ship in The Last Cruise, although at times it still felt more like a tongue in cheek intellectual exercise than a immersive emotional involvement with the characters.
My favorite parts may have been My final comment is that I don't particularly appreciate the sexual commentary, either in this novel or her other. Regardless of if it's supposed to be coming from a man, woman, elderly, young, whatever, it always sounds like adults conversing at the level of junior high kids about sex to me. Not a deal breaker, but irritating.
June 3, 2019
This starts really well but then loses its' footing as the novels moves on. Harry Quirk has been kicked out by his wife, she has accused him of having an affair with a friend, Harry hasn't but she won't believe him. This is one of those novels where the plot doesn't do much, if it was in the hands of Richard Yates, Tessa Hadley it would've worked but the writing just wasn't strong enough to carry it through.
April 6, 2024
I did enjoy this book a lot but it’s just not something I ultimately sitting with after finishing. like the language and pacing and plot movement is great (albeit the first half really hooks but the second half slows down) but by the end I just really do not care about any of the characters and the circumstances in which they ended up in
March 21, 2020
This was a delightful book. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a novel as much as this.
July 25, 2011
Is unhappiness a natural part of marriage? How long should you fight for something you want, and if you stop fighting for it, does that mean you no longer want it? Can you love someone even if they're utterly wrong for you? These questions, and many others, are addressed in Kate Christensen's fantastic new novel, The Astral.
Harry Quirk is a poet in his early 50s who had once experienced some acclaim for his work, but his style is now considered outdated. One morning his wife, Luz, a fiercely passionate and paranoid woman, accuses him of having a long-time affair with his oldest friend, Marion, and she throws him out of their Brooklyn apartment, destroying his latest work, love sonnets to imaginary women. No matter what anyone tells Luz, she clings to the idea that Harry has been unfaithful, and reinvents every encounter he had with Marion as proof of his affair. Locked out of his apartment, his work destroyed, Harry briefly stays at a flophouse before moving from place to place, and finds a job at a lumberyard run by Hasidic Jews. As he tries repeatedly to convince an unpersuadable Luz about his innocence, he tries living a normal life, although for Harry, that includes drinking to excess in his neighborhood bar, talking with Marion about why their relationship never moved beyond friendship, and trying to rescue his son, Hector, from the religious cult he has joined, one that believes he is the second coming of the Messiah.
Kate Christensen did a phenomenal job with this book. While I didn't enjoy Luz's character at all and wondered why Harry would fight so hard to keep a marriage that often sounded so challenging, the other characters in this book were so vivid and rich, and I enjoyed spending time with them. Christensen is a terrific writer (although, admittedly, I've never read any of her previous novels) and I found myself really invested in Harry's story. I've said before that a great book is one where you wonder about what happens to the characters once you've finished reading. That was definitely the case with The Astral. It may sneak up on you while you're reading it, but you'll definitely enjoy it.
Harry Quirk is a poet in his early 50s who had once experienced some acclaim for his work, but his style is now considered outdated. One morning his wife, Luz, a fiercely passionate and paranoid woman, accuses him of having a long-time affair with his oldest friend, Marion, and she throws him out of their Brooklyn apartment, destroying his latest work, love sonnets to imaginary women. No matter what anyone tells Luz, she clings to the idea that Harry has been unfaithful, and reinvents every encounter he had with Marion as proof of his affair. Locked out of his apartment, his work destroyed, Harry briefly stays at a flophouse before moving from place to place, and finds a job at a lumberyard run by Hasidic Jews. As he tries repeatedly to convince an unpersuadable Luz about his innocence, he tries living a normal life, although for Harry, that includes drinking to excess in his neighborhood bar, talking with Marion about why their relationship never moved beyond friendship, and trying to rescue his son, Hector, from the religious cult he has joined, one that believes he is the second coming of the Messiah.
Kate Christensen did a phenomenal job with this book. While I didn't enjoy Luz's character at all and wondered why Harry would fight so hard to keep a marriage that often sounded so challenging, the other characters in this book were so vivid and rich, and I enjoyed spending time with them. Christensen is a terrific writer (although, admittedly, I've never read any of her previous novels) and I found myself really invested in Harry's story. I've said before that a great book is one where you wonder about what happens to the characters once you've finished reading. That was definitely the case with The Astral. It may sneak up on you while you're reading it, but you'll definitely enjoy it.
November 17, 2011
Wow this book was something else. I would first recommend it to anyone wanting to increase their vocabulary. I have never heard so many different adjectives and combined-hyphenated words in a book before. I know of no one who speaks like these characters. In fact the characters are people that I would probably never spend time with. Harry the main character is a poet who does not have a job except for occasionally publishing poems. He gets kicked out of his house by his wife, Luz,a nurse who more or less supports the family, because she thinks he is having an affair. He is not but she is super insecure and is also going to a therapist who tells her patients what she thinks they should do. Luz and Harry have two children, a daughter who is a freegan which is a person who tries to exhist on as many free things as possible and a son who is a member of a cult and is posses as the savior. Luz and Harry are so totally wrong for each other. Harry wants Luz back and Luz claimed she was playing hard to get to see if he really loved her and yada yada yada, This book is like a train wreck. I didn't want to finish it but I could not look away.
Read
August 5, 2011The thing about my Kindle is that while I read it, I can't engage in one of my worst reading practices--skimming. Wait, my two worst habits, skimming and reading the last pages. Sometimes at the height of total freak about a character (will she live?) or plot (does the earthquake ever stop?), I find myself flipping the pages of a hard copy just to calm my beating heart.
Worst case is that I've had it with the book, but I just can't put it down until I know if the marriage will survive or all will be happy or sad, dead or alive. Then I can go on with my life.
The writing in this book is good. Clearly, the author is talented. The characters in the first few chapters are well drawn, but I found myself desiring the skim and the flip. And since this story is on my Kindle, I developed a new habit, which is to hit "home" and go to another book.
Since books can live forever digitally and toting them around weighs nothing, I may pick up this book again at another time. Or, I may just do the digital skim and flip to see what happens and move on with my life. I'll wait and see.
Worst case is that I've had it with the book, but I just can't put it down until I know if the marriage will survive or all will be happy or sad, dead or alive. Then I can go on with my life.
The writing in this book is good. Clearly, the author is talented. The characters in the first few chapters are well drawn, but I found myself desiring the skim and the flip. And since this story is on my Kindle, I developed a new habit, which is to hit "home" and go to another book.
Since books can live forever digitally and toting them around weighs nothing, I may pick up this book again at another time. Or, I may just do the digital skim and flip to see what happens and move on with my life. I'll wait and see.
July 30, 2011
Harry Quirk has just been thrown out of his apartment (The Astral building) by his wife, Luz, when she suspects him of writing poems for another women, her best friend, Marion. Harry doesn't understand what happened and seems more confused than anything about his impending divorce. The author does a wonderful job relating this divorce through a man's point of view. Harry seems lost and his two children (also outsiders) don't really know how to deal with him. Their conflict with Harry doesn't seem to add to the story, but do offer an offbeat tangent that I liked. Harry does start a new relationship which, to me, seems like he is trying to pick right up where the last one left off. If you are looking for a good book where Brooklyn plays a starring role, then this one about divorce from a male perspective should be just what you are looking for.
June 17, 2011
While I think I enjoyed The Epicure's Lament more, I did enjoy this book. It is rare that I empathize with a male character over a female one, but in this case, I was wholly in Harry's corner and furious with Luz. I think that Christensen totally captured that strange combination of middle-aged angst, the comfort of being settled balanced against the desire for some of that drama from our youth, which you can't replicate without throwing your whole life into chaos. Great writing, Brooklyn was as much a character as any of the people in the book, and you cared about what happened to everyone. Harry's new relationship seemed doomed to fall into a domestic routine too quickly, but you did hold out hope that he has learned something along the way.
February 18, 2012
This novel details the breakdown of a marriage. Harry Quirk is a 57-year-old poet whose marriage is falling apart. He's kicked out of his family home because his wife suspects he is having an affair with his best friend (a woman named Marion). I really liked the style of writing and the way the author delved into the story. She really examined close human relationships, and why marriages and friendships can flourish or fall apart. Harry also had a number of different relationships, including a strong relationship with his lesbian daughter, and there was a sub plot involving his son, who was involved in some kind of cult.
This was a bit of a different read for me, and I really enjoyed getting into the head of a 57-year-old man. Great writing too.
This was a bit of a different read for me, and I really enjoyed getting into the head of a 57-year-old man. Great writing too.
March 24, 2013
I don't know what it is about Kate Christensen's writing that makes me feel unsatisfied. I keep going back to her because she has a good eye for detail and writes about New York so evocatively. I'm a sucker for NY-based writers who can bring the City to life, but her characters somehow fall flat for me and I can't explain why. They are crafted with intelligence and detail, but never fully come to life. Brooklyn, on the other hand, is all there in its sooty, diverse glory. Here's another of those books where the climb is more fun than the summit.
March 4, 2013
*I sat at the bar and ordered a Moonshine Fizz, which came in a minature tin bucket and tasted cheerful and deadly in about equal parts, which was exactly what I needed at the moment.*
*Occasionally, I liked the daytime drinking of har liquor. It made the daylight seem artificial and the air extra oxygenated and gave me an adrenaline rush, like being in a casino.*
*"Tastes like bourbon and lemon soda," I said. "And a little extra something. Sweat, maybe."
*Occasionally, I liked the daytime drinking of har liquor. It made the daylight seem artificial and the air extra oxygenated and gave me an adrenaline rush, like being in a casino.*
*"Tastes like bourbon and lemon soda," I said. "And a little extra something. Sweat, maybe."
June 28, 2011
I'm giving this one more star than I would have, had it not been for the book's setting in my neighborhood. I enjoyed the (mostly) veiled references to landmarks in the neighborhood, and characters that I'm sure I've encountered in bars and on the sidewalks around my house. The main character...not so much.
August 18, 2011
I think this just may be a masterpiece. It belongs with the best of Roth and Updike (I hope you accept this in the spirit in which I mean it; I revere both). It took great courage to write first-person in the voice of a man but Christensen pulled it off with grace and insight and smarts. I think perhaps only Dame Murdoch did it as well. I will now go back and read all her earlier novels.
October 15, 2011
I assume this is called The Astral because The Most Clueless Man in Brooklyn was taken. Harry does get a clue eventually, but it takes him long enough. If you let go of the desire to like all the characters, it's pretty good.
July 24, 2016
I loved this book so much. It reminded me of John Updike's Rabbit series, which I also loved. I can't wait to read her other books.
November 12, 2024
One thing I will always say about Kate Christensen is her writing is simply amazing. She has a way with words that seems effortless and gives her novels a nice flow. On the flip side, her novels are character driven, not plot driven. So, you’re usually plucked in the middle of some conflict or trauma that the protagonist is working through and that’s pretty much the gist of it. Unfortunately, her later novels suffer from this and The Astral is no exception.
The Astral follows 57-year-old Harry Quirk after Luz, his wife, kicks him out because she’s convinced he’s having an affair with Marion, his platonic best friend of 35 years. Harry is a poet and was working on a book of love poems when Luz reads them, is convinced they’re about Marion, rips up the book, and kicks him out of their cozy top floor apartment in the Astral — a large, old brownstone building they raised their family in (which, in spite of the novel being named after it, plays very little role in the story itself).
We then follow Harry as he rides his bike around Greenpoint frequenting a dive bar of drinking buddies, debating whether he should take up his daughter’s offer to move in with her, trying to convince his son to leave a religious cult, and slowly coming to terms with maybe, just maybe, his marriage is over. Not much happens beyond that.
It wouldn’t be so disappointing if Christensen hadn’t trod similar ground to much better effect in her far superior novel, Jeremy Thrane. In that one, we follow 35-year-old Jeremy Thrane as he wanders around Manhattan trying to find himself after his closeted action movie star boyfriend ends their 10-year relationship to marry an actress. It’s a great place to start if you’re new to Kate Christensen.
The Astral follows 57-year-old Harry Quirk after Luz, his wife, kicks him out because she’s convinced he’s having an affair with Marion, his platonic best friend of 35 years. Harry is a poet and was working on a book of love poems when Luz reads them, is convinced they’re about Marion, rips up the book, and kicks him out of their cozy top floor apartment in the Astral — a large, old brownstone building they raised their family in (which, in spite of the novel being named after it, plays very little role in the story itself).
We then follow Harry as he rides his bike around Greenpoint frequenting a dive bar of drinking buddies, debating whether he should take up his daughter’s offer to move in with her, trying to convince his son to leave a religious cult, and slowly coming to terms with maybe, just maybe, his marriage is over. Not much happens beyond that.
It wouldn’t be so disappointing if Christensen hadn’t trod similar ground to much better effect in her far superior novel, Jeremy Thrane. In that one, we follow 35-year-old Jeremy Thrane as he wanders around Manhattan trying to find himself after his closeted action movie star boyfriend ends their 10-year relationship to marry an actress. It’s a great place to start if you’re new to Kate Christensen.
July 10, 2017
More like the Disappearing Storyline
Disappointed. This seems to be the month for me to get excited about a storyline or character only to watch it disappear without acknowledgement or goodbye. I really expected this book to have something to say about the nature of friendship between a man and a woman or offer insight in to the workings of a long-term marriage. Barring that, I was even willing to settle for the pointlessness of raising children and what to do about it, but no - even the cults got a break in this read. Really, they're not so bad, are they?
Harry Quirk was well into the long slow spiral downward, his life finally being exposed as being held together by the good will of others. I was certain that he and I would find out what he was truly made up of and be granted a glimpse into the dark soul of fellow travelers but instead, Ms Christensen shied away from Harry's dark night of the soul. Instead, the usual suspects, rich friends and good natured, good looking accessible women rescued him from himself and his rightfully earned fate and thus deprived Harry and his readers from any sort of change whatsoever. So disappointing considering the tour de force of The Great Man.
However, the clever lines, brilliantly drawn characters and original descriptions make this a pleasurable read nonetheless. In many ways this sets the bar higher. This novel reads like the last obligatory novel in a hated publishing contract. Now on to The Epicure's Lament!
Disappointed. This seems to be the month for me to get excited about a storyline or character only to watch it disappear without acknowledgement or goodbye. I really expected this book to have something to say about the nature of friendship between a man and a woman or offer insight in to the workings of a long-term marriage. Barring that, I was even willing to settle for the pointlessness of raising children and what to do about it, but no - even the cults got a break in this read. Really, they're not so bad, are they?
Harry Quirk was well into the long slow spiral downward, his life finally being exposed as being held together by the good will of others. I was certain that he and I would find out what he was truly made up of and be granted a glimpse into the dark soul of fellow travelers but instead, Ms Christensen shied away from Harry's dark night of the soul. Instead, the usual suspects, rich friends and good natured, good looking accessible women rescued him from himself and his rightfully earned fate and thus deprived Harry and his readers from any sort of change whatsoever. So disappointing considering the tour de force of The Great Man.
However, the clever lines, brilliantly drawn characters and original descriptions make this a pleasurable read nonetheless. In many ways this sets the bar higher. This novel reads like the last obligatory novel in a hated publishing contract. Now on to The Epicure's Lament!
December 28, 2017
Poor Henry. Everyone thinks he is in a friendship with benefits, when he has never had sex with Marian. But it is enough for his wife to throw him out. Henry and his dumpster diving lesbian daughter are trying to get his son out of a cult that has designated the son as the messiah. Henry gets a job, gets fired, then gets another job. He also gets asked to leave several abodes.
With twenty pages left to the book I wondered what the climax would be or what the purpose of the book would be. It turns out it is just about a guy accepting the changes in his life.
This book is full of sterotypes. Guess what nationality the crazy ex-wife was . . . Mexican.
The book is written in first person Henry, but I never got the feeling he was a guy. Maybe it was because he was a poet.
But I did finish it, so it's worth three stars. I just can't recommend it.
With twenty pages left to the book I wondered what the climax would be or what the purpose of the book would be. It turns out it is just about a guy accepting the changes in his life.
This book is full of sterotypes. Guess what nationality the crazy ex-wife was . . . Mexican.
The book is written in first person Henry, but I never got the feeling he was a guy. Maybe it was because he was a poet.
But I did finish it, so it's worth three stars. I just can't recommend it.
January 14, 2019
This was my first book by Kate Christensen. Based on the impressive cover blurbs, I'm guessing she's written better books than The Astral, which was a dreary slog of a story. I'm not sure why she chose to use a first person narrator for this novel, as that character adds absolutely zero insight into his own life or the lives of his friends and family. There are way too many characters in the novel and way too many subplots. The author doesn't seem to know what to do with all of them. There are long passages of very bland dialogue, which advance the weak plot, but do very little to provide any nuance or depth for the characters or the story. There is an excessive level of detail about the Brooklyn neighborhood where the story is set. This kind of detail is cheap filler. Those pages would have been better employed describing the characters feelings.
June 12, 2023
This was a 3.5. Realistic fiction -- I couldn't tell if this was an unreliable narrator or not -- or was he just a man who didn't know his own emotions very well :-) Lots of descriptions of NYC and the different boroughs and neighborhoods -- it made me wish I knew that area. This book would not be for everyone. Not much actually happens, it is just the story of one man and his relationships with his two adult children and his failed marriage.
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