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Overview
What is charismatic Holocaust survivor Meyer Maslow to think when a rough-looking young neo-Nazi named Vincent Nolan walks into the Manhattan office of Maslow's human rights foundation and declares that he wants to "save guys like me from becoming guys like me"? As Vincent gradually turns into the sort of person who might actually be able to do this, he also transforms those around him: Meyer Maslow, who fears heroism has become a desk job; the foundation's dedicated fund-raiser, Bonnie Kalen, an appealingly vulnerable divorced single mother; and even Bonnie's teenage son.
Francine Prose's A Changed Man is a darkly comic and masterfully inventive novel that poses essential questions about human nature, morality, and the capacity for personal reinvention.
Synopsis
What is charismatic Holocaust survivor Meyer Maslow to think when a rough-looking young neo-Nazi named Vincent Nolan walks into the Manhattan office of Maslow's human rights foundation and declares that he wants to "save guys like me from becoming guys like me"? As Vincent gradually turns into the sort of person who might actually be able to do this, he also transforms those around him: Meyer Maslow, who fears heroism has become a desk job; the foundation's dedicated fund-raiser, Bonnie Kalen, an appealingly vulnerable divorced single mother; and even Bonnie's teenage son.
Francine Prose's A Changed Man is a darkly comic and masterfully inventive novel that poses essential questions about human nature, morality, and the capacity for personal reinvention.
The New York Times - Liesl Schillinger
Here Prose uses the exaggerated failings of an ideological extremist to expose the wishy-washy but more pervasive moral failures of contemporary America: detached or absent fathers; frantic, overworked mothers; undernurtured children; checkbook philanthropy; media hypocrisy; the shortage of local heroes willing to help the people around them. But for all of that, the novel isn't a sermon or a lecture. Prose doesn't sit in judgment; instead, she holds a mirror up to her characters, reflecting both their imperfections and their charms.
Editorials
Carlin Romano
"American literature’s finest satirist of professionals with problems . . . Prose knows the territory and tweaks it deliciously."Richard Eder
"A novel of ideas, and provocative ones. Class—the dirty American secret—is no secret to Prose."Miami Herald
"[A] brilliant new comic novel . . . Prose’s sense of humor is as keen as ever."New York Times Book Review
"Powerful, funny, and exquisitely nuanced . . . This story has a continental sweep."New York Observer
"Pitch-perfect and nuanced . . . We can’t wait to crawl into bed with this book every night."Chicago Tribune
"Timely and clever . . . Prose carries us along on the sheer energy of her sentences."Entertainment Weekly
"[An] artfully structured novel . . . [with] a selection of showstopping literary set pieces."Harper's Bazaar
"Francine Prose is back with a powerful new novel about the possibility of starting over."Newsday
"This book has it all: great characters, dark humor, a racing plot and important themes."San Francisco Chronicle
"Well-crafted and insightful."Janet Maslin
"Mercilessly funny."Newsday
“This book has it all: great characters, dark humor, a racing plot and important themes.”Entertainment Weekly
“[An] artfully structured novel . . . [with] a selection of showstopping literary set pieces.”Chicago Tribune
“Timely and clever . . . Prose carries us along on the sheer energy of her sentences.”Miami Herald
“[A] brilliant new comic novel . . . Prose’s sense of humor is as keen as ever.”San Francisco Chronicle
“Well-crafted and insightful.”New York Times Book Review
“Powerful, funny, and exquisitely nuanced . . . This story has a continental sweep.”New York Observer
“Pitch-perfect and nuanced . . . We can’t wait to crawl into bed with this book every night.”Harper's Bazaar
“Francine Prose is back with a powerful new novel about the possibility of starting over.”Liesl Schillinger
Here Prose uses the exaggerated failings of an ideological extremist to expose the wishy-washy but more pervasive moral failures of contemporary America: detached or absent fathers; frantic, overworked mothers; undernurtured children; checkbook philanthropy; media hypocrisy; the shortage of local heroes willing to help the people around them. But for all of that, the novel isn't a sermon or a lecture. Prose doesn't sit in judgment; instead, she holds a mirror up to her characters, reflecting both their imperfections and their charms.— The New York Times