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    A Regular Guy
    A Regular Guy
    A Regular Guy
    Audiobook14 hours

    A Regular Guy

    Written by Mona Simpson

    Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In this luminous and tartly comic new novel, Mona Simpson, modern master of the surreal family drama, trains her eye on a generation - and a man - torn between idealism and self-absorption.

    Tom Owens is a brilliant barefoot entrepreneur who has become rich and famous by inventing a new kind of business - a man who is fond of showering his largesse on friends and perfect strangers even as he resists any deeper claims on his affection. Into Owens's charmed life comes a ten-year-old girl whose claims he cannot ignore: Jane is his daughter, born out of wedlock, raised in communes, and now dispatched into his care by a mother who is no longer capable of providing it. As this raggedy, preternaturally observant girl seeks a place within Owens's circle, A Regular Guy depicts the miraculous chemistry that transforms longing into belonging, an uneasy menage into a family, and an arrogant boy-man into a father.

    "Simpson understands families. She understands money. She understands America. This is a poignant, funny book about loss and disillusionment." - Chicago Tribune

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 16, 2012
    ISBN9781455892044
    A Regular Guy
    Author

    Mona Simpson

    Mona Simpson is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Grant and the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. She is the author of the acclaimed novels Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road and My Hollywood. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her husband and their two children.

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    Reviews for A Regular Guy

    3.5/5

    23 ratings1 review

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    • 4/5
      This is a good, but difficult book to read. Mona Simpson writes well; she masters a sort of folky writing style where the reader must infer from the dialogue what really is happening behind what is said. Simpson comes across as a dispassionate but very keen observer of things around her. The real beauty of this book, though, can only be understood if you have read a lot about Steve in real life. Without knowing about Steve, this book is entirely without context. More than anything, this work is personal, it's real, it's poignant and it is written in a deceptively dispassionate way. What Mona has done with her characters - particularly Noah and Jane, is absolutely remarkable. To create Noah on paper, is to my eyes, one of Simpson's greatest accomplishments in this book. Do I recommend this book? Only if you are interested in a serious, slow, literary read and only if you have done lots of homework on understanding Steve.