July, July

As he did with In the Lake of the Woods, National Book Award winner Tim O'Brien strikes at the emotional nerve center of our lives with this ambitious, compassionate, and terrifically compelling new novel that tells the remarkable story of the generation molded and defined by the 1960s. At the thirtieth anniversary of Minnesota's Darton Hall College class of 1969, ten old friends reassemble for a July weekend of dancing, drinking, flirting, reminiscing, and regretting. The three decades since their graduation have seen marriage and divorce, children and careers, dreams deferred and disappointed-many memories and many ghosts. Together their individual stories create a portrait of a generation launched into adulthood at the moment when their country, too, lost its innocence. Imbued with his signature themes of passion, memory, and yearning, July, July is Tim O'Brien's most fully realized work.

Book Magazine

If you believe that college was the best—or at least the most important—time of your life, this novel is for you. Set in 2000, the date of the thirty-year reunion of Darnton Hall College's class of 1969, the novel uses the promise of the late '60s to explain the sorrows of its middle-aged protagonists. Each chapter focuses on one of a dozen or so characters, showing us a pivotal decision, a road not taken, a promise broken or fulfilled. Following the intertwined lives of a large cast of characters as they negotiate the meaningless present and the golden past gives O'Brien room to develop a complex narrative, but at the end of the day, it's not easy to sympathize with (or care much about) these people. Virtually indistinguishable from one another in their resentments and regrets, they bear witness to the narcissism of the baby boomer generation and the emptiness of its version of success.

In collections of short stories and essays -- The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home -- and in his novels -- most notably, the National Book Award-winning Going After Cacciato -- Tim O'Brien has established himself as a startling and authoritative voice on one of the darkest chapters in American history -- the Vietnam war.