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Narrated by Steven Kaplan
Eleanor HendersonUnabridged — 11 hours, 6 minutes
Narrated by Steven Kaplan
Eleanor HendersonUnabridged — 11 hours, 6 minutes
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“Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination. The resulting novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is the best thing I've read in a long time.”
-Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder
A sweeping, multigenerational drama, set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City during the late 1980s, Ten Thousand Saints triumphantly heralds the arrival a remarkable new writer. Eleanor Henderson makes a truly stunning debut with a novel that is part coming of age, part coming to terms, immediately joining the ranks of The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud and Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude. Adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young-and old-are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.
The ambition of Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson's debut novel about a group of unambitious lost souls, is beautiful. In nearly 400 pages, Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire and bit of emotional detritus. She is never ironic or underwhelmed; her preferred mode is fierce, devoted and elegiac.
—The New York Times
Henderson proves herself to be an expert ethnographer; her detail work is phenomenal…But her characterizations demonstrate Henderson’s greatest skill. Even the ones who receive comparatively little stage time are always precisely defined…Not all of these characters are particularly appealing, but they’re memorable, and Henderson’s affection for them is palpable.
—The Washington Post
Henderson debuts with a coming-of-age story set in the 1980s that departs from the genre's familiar tropes to find a panoramic view of how the imperfect escape from our parents' mistakes makes (equally imperfect) adults of us. Jude Keffy-Horn and Teddy McNicholas are drug-addled adolescents stuck in suburban Vermont and dreaming of an escape to New York City. But after Teddy dies of an overdose, Jude makes good on their dream and forms a de facto family with Teddy's straight-edge brother, Johnny; Jude's estranged pot-farmer father, Lester; and the troubled Eliza Urbanski, who may be carrying Teddy's child. What results is an odyssey encompassing the age of CBGB, Hare Krishnas, zines, and the emergence of AIDS. Henderson is careful, amid all this youthy nostalgia, not to sideline the adults, who look upon the changing fashions with varying levels of engagement. Still, the narrative occasionally teeters into a didactic, researched tone that may put off readers to whom the milieu isn't new—but the commitment to its characters and jettisoning of hayseed-in-the-city cliché distinguish a nervy voice adept at etching the outlines of a generation, its prejudices and pandemics, and the idols killed along the way. (June)
Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire.... She is never ironic or underwhelmed; her preferred mode is fierce, devoted and elegiac.” — Stacy D'Erasmo, New York Times Book Review, Cover Review
“One of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2011…[A] raucous first novel” — New York Times Book Review, Paperback Row
“Rarely has a coming-of-age novel captured a time and place-here the late 1980s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side-with such perfect pitch. Grade: A” — Entertainment Weekly
“[Henderson] has a perfect ear for conversation between siblings; the way a lazy spat can turn into a grudging moment of closeness. And the euphoria of the straight edge movement that Jude and Johnny embrace suffuses the novel with a reckless, glib joy…a bittersweet, lovely book.” — NPR.org
“The best and most lyrically written coming-of-age novel of the year.” — The Daily Beast/Newsweek Writers' Best Books of 2011
“[A] rare debut that, with a flinty kind of nostalgia, invokes both the gods and demons of a generation.” — Vogue
“An irresistibly rich and engrossing novel…poignant, complex…Henderson brilliantly evokes the gritty energy of New York City in the ‘80s, and the violent euphoria of the music scene. The hard-edged settings highlight the touching vulnerability of young characters.” — O magazine, Best Fiction 2011
“Highbrow/Brilliant: All the all-star sentences in Eleanor Henderson’s punk-rock-teen novel Ten Thousand Saints.” — New York Magazine Approval Matrix
“Ten Thousand Saints is a whirling dervish of a first novel—a planet, a universe, a trip. As wild as that may sound, wonder of wonders, the book is also carefully and lovingly created… [Henderson] writes with great compassion but does not flinch” — Los Angeles Times
“[The] reader smells the sweat, blood, urine, beer; hears the crowds screaming; feels herself at times flung into the mosh pit - Henderson shepherds her characters with blatant affection…raucous, wounded, sweet, spasmodically desperate, [Saints] comes to feel like a modern, drug-and-rock-riddled version of Peter Pan…” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Henderson’s debut novel bursts out of the gate with all of the drive and sensory assault of the punk music that infuses it…. It’s an auspicious debut, and gives us reason to hope that Henderson will mature as satisfyingly as her subjects do.” — Boston Globe
“[An] empathetic novel of wayward youth and their wayward parents…Henderson proves herself to be an expert ethnographer; her detail work is phenomenal.…characterizations demonstrate Henderson’s greatest skill. Even the ones who receive comparatively little stage time are always precisely defined… Henderson’s affection for [the characters] is palpable.” — Washington Post
“Absorbing…Tone is just one element Henderson balances well.... She also packs her coming-of-age story with grit and a generational wallop…. In this naturalistic and assured novel, Henderson crafts a satisfying structure…psychological astuteness is a key pleasure of Ten Thousand Saints.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer
“In Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson’s début novel, the ghosts of St. Marks are brought back to life…Henderson’s book reads in part like an elegy: she follows her characters from 1987 to 2006, long enough to capture the end of the era and its strange aftermath.” — New Yorker Book Bench Blog
“Proudly unsentimental…Henderson zeroes in on the essentially malleable nature of these teenagers without squashing them into an indistinguishable mass…, Henderson parcels out its history in tantalizing images and snatches of conversations, holding back where her protagonists might themselves miss the significance of their surroundings.” — The Onion AV Club
“Henderson’s novel recalls all the sweat and fury of coming of age. . . It’s also a beautifully rendered study of devotion-to a cause, a religion, a scene, and one’s own family-and all the conflict and sacrifice that devotion entails.” — The Millions
“I loved TEN THOUSAND SAINTS; again and again I was stopped cold by beautiful chapter-ending sentences. I remember this Manhattan, the Sunday matinees at CB’s, the rage over Yuppies colonizing the East Village. ” — Dean Wareham, lead singer of Galaxie 500 and Luna, author of BLACK POSTCARDS
“Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination. The resulting novel, TEN THOUSAND SAINTS, is the best thing I’ve read in a long time. “ — Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder
“Countless coming-of-age novels have been written. When a truly exceptional story of this nature does come along, it’s a significant literary event… Ten Thousand Saints is memorable for its boldness and ambition, its empathetic prose, and the troubled souls who discover unlikely forms of redemption.” — Dallas Morning News
“TEN THOUSAND SAINTS is funny, touching, artistic, surprising, lovely, eye-opening, and very, very wise.” — Arthur Phillips, author of PRAGUE and THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR
One of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2011…[A] raucous first novel
Highbrow/Brilliant: All the all-star sentences in Eleanor Henderson’s punk-rock-teen novel Ten Thousand Saints.
[A] rare debut that, with a flinty kind of nostalgia, invokes both the gods and demons of a generation.
An irresistibly rich and engrossing novel…poignant, complex…Henderson brilliantly evokes the gritty energy of New York City in the ‘80s, and the violent euphoria of the music scene. The hard-edged settings highlight the touching vulnerability of young characters.
Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire.... She is never ironic or underwhelmed; her preferred mode is fierce, devoted and elegiac.
The best and most lyrically written coming-of-age novel of the year.
[The] reader smells the sweat, blood, urine, beer; hears the crowds screaming; feels herself at times flung into the mosh pit - Henderson shepherds her characters with blatant affection…raucous, wounded, sweet, spasmodically desperate, [Saints] comes to feel like a modern, drug-and-rock-riddled version of Peter Pan…
Ten Thousand Saints is a whirling dervish of a first novel—a planet, a universe, a trip. As wild as that may sound, wonder of wonders, the book is also carefully and lovingly created… [Henderson] writes with great compassion but does not flinch
[Henderson] has a perfect ear for conversation between siblings; the way a lazy spat can turn into a grudging moment of closeness. And the euphoria of the straight edge movement that Jude and Johnny embrace suffuses the novel with a reckless, glib joy…a bittersweet, lovely book.
Rarely has a coming-of-age novel captured a time and place-here the late 1980s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side-with such perfect pitch. Grade: A
Ten Thousand Saints is a whirling dervish of a first novel—a planet, a universe, a trip. As wild as that may sound, wonder of wonders, the book is also carefully and lovingly created… [Henderson] writes with great compassion but does not flinch
[The] reader smells the sweat, blood, urine, beer; hears the crowds screaming; feels herself at times flung into the mosh pit - Henderson shepherds her characters with blatant affection…raucous, wounded, sweet, spasmodically desperate, [Saints] comes to feel like a modern, drug-and-rock-riddled version of Peter Pan…
Henderson’s novel recalls all the sweat and fury of coming of age. . . It’s also a beautifully rendered study of devotion-to a cause, a religion, a scene, and one’s own family-and all the conflict and sacrifice that devotion entails.
In Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson’s début novel, the ghosts of St. Marks are brought back to life…Henderson’s book reads in part like an elegy: she follows her characters from 1987 to 2006, long enough to capture the end of the era and its strange aftermath.
Proudly unsentimental…Henderson zeroes in on the essentially malleable nature of these teenagers without squashing them into an indistinguishable mass…, Henderson parcels out its history in tantalizing images and snatches of conversations, holding back where her protagonists might themselves miss the significance of their surroundings.
Henderson’s debut novel bursts out of the gate with all of the drive and sensory assault of the punk music that infuses it…. It’s an auspicious debut, and gives us reason to hope that Henderson will mature as satisfyingly as her subjects do.
[An] empathetic novel of wayward youth and their wayward parents…Henderson proves herself to be an expert ethnographer; her detail work is phenomenal.…characterizations demonstrate Henderson’s greatest skill. Even the ones who receive comparatively little stage time are always precisely defined… Henderson’s affection for [the characters] is palpable.
Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination. The resulting novel, TEN THOUSAND SAINTS, is the best thing I’ve read in a long time. “
TEN THOUSAND SAINTS is funny, touching, artistic, surprising, lovely, eye-opening, and very, very wise.
Absorbing…Tone is just one element Henderson balances well.... She also packs her coming-of-age story with grit and a generational wallop…. In this naturalistic and assured novel, Henderson crafts a satisfying structure…psychological astuteness is a key pleasure of Ten Thousand Saints.
Countless coming-of-age novels have been written. When a truly exceptional story of this nature does come along, it’s a significant literary event… Ten Thousand Saints is memorable for its boldness and ambition, its empathetic prose, and the troubled souls who discover unlikely forms of redemption.
I loved TEN THOUSAND SAINTS; again and again I was stopped cold by beautiful chapter-ending sentences. I remember this Manhattan, the Sunday matinees at CB’s, the rage over Yuppies colonizing the East Village.
[An] empathetic novel of wayward youth and their wayward parents…Henderson proves herself to be an expert ethnographer; her detail work is phenomenal.…characterizations demonstrate Henderson’s greatest skill. Even the ones who receive comparatively little stage time are always precisely defined… Henderson’s affection for [the characters] is palpable.
"Highbrow/Brilliant: All the all-star sentences in Eleanor Henderson’s punk-rock-teen novel Ten Thousand Saints."
"An irresistibly rich and engrossing novel…poignant, complex…Henderson brilliantly evokes the gritty energy of New York City in the ‘80s, and the violent euphoria of the music scene. The hard-edged settings highlight the touching vulnerability of young characters."
"The best and most lyrically written coming-of-age novel of the year."
Proudly unsentimental…Henderson zeroes in on the essentially malleable nature of these teenagers without squashing them into an indistinguishable mass…, Henderson parcels out its history in tantalizing images and snatches of conversations, holding back where her protagonists might themselves miss the significance of their surroundings.
In Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson’s début novel, the ghosts of St. Marks are brought back to life…Henderson’s book reads in part like an elegy: she follows her characters from 1987 to 2006, long enough to capture the end of the era and its strange aftermath.
Henderson has certainly captured the dynamic of a generation of kids trying to overcome the legacy of whacked-out parents, terminal permissiveness and no rudder… Evoking the East Village scene in the 1980s, this debut novel captures the coming-of-age experience.
Ten Thousand Saints is a rousing novel that transcends any time or place…Henderson has penned a paean to youth’s “us against the world” bravado and its attendant triumphs, follies and quixotic dreams…this is a story that will entertain by the pool and keep a reader coming back for more.
Henderson…paints a compelling portrait of Generation Xers whom fiercely reject their parents’ values of free love…
The magic of Henderson’s debut lies in the way she so completely captures the experience of coming-of-age in the turbulent and exciting era that was the 1980s.
Henderson tells a personal tale that fits perfectly with the city of the era …What Henderson makes real is the truth of NYC in the pre-millennium...
Vibrant…a set of achingly real characters... whom she writes about with care and affection, digging below rough exteriors to find the source of their anger, frustration, boredom and indifference.... [Henderson] proves herself at the same time a deft and promising storyteller.
Henderson writes powerfully about drugs and the things that take their place…Ten Thousand Saints is rich and sound.
Henderson brings 1908s East Village New York to vivid life in her ambitious first novel, a powerful, coming-of-age-story.
…Henderson at her best has a deep understanding for the way the world feels brand-new and hopeful in a teen’s eyes. . . Ten Thousand Saints is easy to admire for its close observation and the energy of its prose…
[Eleanor Henderson] has talent to spare…[a] tremendously good book.
[Henderson] re-creat[es] with sharp detail the look, sounds and feel of [late 80s New York City] subculture. Her story is a timeless one of heartbreak and salvation told in precise language, period vernacular and consistent rhythm that make this long novel unfold swiftly.
…a story of adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, punk rock and the efforts of young and old to understand each other in the late 20th century.
Ten Thousand Saints is told uniquely without the impassioned and easily derailed voice of a rock enthusiast. Instead, Henderson carefully lays out the action with the professionalism of a true historian/storyteller well beyond her years in ability.
By the end of the fourth sentence of this debut novel, the reader knows that on December 31, 1987, 15-year-old Teddy will be dead. The Vermont teen, best friend to Jude, 16, dies of a drug overdose that nearly kills Jude as well—but not before Teddy's one glorious sexual encounter impregnates worldly wise Eliza, daughter of Jude's father's New York City girlfriend. The three teens, the children of mothers and fathers who are all over the parenting map (former and current potheads; an alcoholic; one deprived of contact by his ex; a rich, powerful, and controlling Manhattanite; and a sensible Earth-Mother glassblower), break your heart with their awkward, angry, irresponsible stumbling. And yet Jude, shaken by Teddy's death, and Eliza, determined to give birth to her baby, move in unexpected directions, led by Teddy's half-brother Johnny, a tattoo artist and musician associated with a cutting-edge group called straight edge that worships punk while demonizing drugs. Johnny must battle his own demons while taking on Jude's and Eliza's. VERDICT Henderson's powerful, surprising look at lost teens trying to course-correct with the violence-tinged straight-edge culture captivates via its authentic reassurance that adolescence is an often reckless ride to adulthood. [See Prepub Alert, 11/29/10.]—Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Screwed-up parents beget screwed-up kids. So it's no surprise that an ill-omened teen pregnancy is the centerpiece of this bold debut, a heady witches' brew.
Teddy and Jude, best friends in their mid-teens, have big problems. Jude was adopted at birth, possibly suffering from fetal-alcohol effects. His adoptive parents, Les and Harriet, are feckless potheads, Les growing pot, Harriet making drug paraphernalia. When Jude turns nine, Harriet evicts Les for cheating on her; Jude hasn't seen him since. As for Teddy, his Indian father is supposedly dead; his white mother, a sloppy drunk, has just split. The boys skateboard through their Vermont town, getting high and shoplifting at will. On this last day of 1987, they have a date with Eliza, a total stranger but the daughter of Les' girlfriend. At 15, she's already a cokehead and sexually promiscuous. They gatecrash a party. Eliza gives Teddy cocaine before they have sex in a bathroom and she returns to New York. Back out in the cold, Jude's idea that they inhale Freon is a step too far; he almost dies and Teddy does die, but he will haunt the novel, for he has made Eliza pregnant. All this could be depressing, but it's not, thanks to the barbed language and fast pacing. And Henderson's just getting started. Les shows up to remove Jude to Alphabet City, the ravaged Manhattan neighborhood where he lives. A near neighbor is Teddy's 18-year-old half brother Johnny, whose role becomes increasingly prominent. Johnny is a tattoo artist and musician, as well as a straight-edge hardcore punk (no booze, no drugs). Although a closeted gay, he chivalrously offers to marry Eliza and claim paternity to thwart Eliza's mother, who's pushing for adoption. This is where Henderson loses the thread, wobbling uncertainly between Jude, Johnny and Eliza while doing double duty as a counterculture guide to the straight-edge scene. Context overwhelms characters, the unwieldy cast now including Johnny's AIDS-stricken lover and Teddy's Indian father.
Henderson displays a powerful moral imagination; all that's missing is discipline.
| BN ID: | 2940173468444 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 06/07/2011 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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Excerpted from Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson Copyright © 2012 by Eleanor Henderson. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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