The Broom of the System

The mysterious disappearance of her great-grandmother and twenty-five other elderly residents from a Shaker Heights nursing home has left Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman emotionally stranded on the edge of the Great Ohio Desert. But that is simply one problem of many for the hapless switchboard operator—seriously compounded by her ongoing affair with her boss, Rick Vigorous; the impending TV stardom of her talking cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, on the Christian Broadcasting Network

Hilarious and wildly inventive, this novel, by the author of The Girl With Curious Hair, takes off where reality ends, as its protagonist, switchboard operator Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, is inundated with more than the usual share of unusual problems.

The "dazzling, exhilarating" (San Francisco Chronicle) debut novel from one of this century's most groundbreaking writers, The Broom of the System is an outlandishly funny and fiercely intelligent exploration of the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

Publishers Weekly

Fans of the late, great David Foster Wallace will delight in narrator Robert Petkoff’s wonderful audio version of the author’s first novel. When Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, a young switchboard attendant at the publishing firm of Frequent and Vigorous, discovers that her great-grandmother has disappeared, her search leads to the recently constructed Great Ohio Desert. Petkoff’s narration is energetic, compelling, and well-paced. He deftly handles Wallace’s linguistic gymnastics and entertains with brutally sharp comedic timing. Listeners will particularly appreciate the range of zany and pitch perfect voices Petkoff lends to Wallace’s equally kooky cast of characters. Fun, funny, and very highly recommended. A Penguin paperback. (June)

Best known as the author of the audacious, shelf-bending postmodern masterpiece Infinite Jest, novelist, essayist, and short story writer David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) was one of the most influential writers of the late 20th century.