An astute, impressive, and ambitious debut.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“[W]ith a shimmering lexicon of fractals, space travel, and physics as well as a piquantly metaphorical sense of place…Kiefer illuminates the nature of a mathematical mind, depicts a dire failure of familial empathy, and translates emotions into cosmic and algorithmic phenomena of startling beauty and profound resonance.” —Booklist
“Arresting and haunting...What do we give up for our careers? What are we willing to sacrifice? For Keith Corcoran, in the stunning climax of The Infinite Tides, the answer is far too much. With intelligent and lyrical prose, this novel is at times heartbreaking... [A] remarkably self-assured debut. This isn't just the best first book I'll read this year; it may be the best.” —Brooklyn Rail
“Smart, lyrical, deeply moving. The central character, a NASA astronaut who has touched the stars, must come to earth, as we all must. What he finds down here beneath the heavens is dizzying in its emotional complexity and pure aching beauty.” —T.C. Boyle, author of When the Killing's Done
“The Infinite Tides takes as its subject an astronaut brought to earth by abandonment and bewilderment. His journey is into the unknown of common suburbia, which he inhabits like an alien, and in whose unfamiliar atmosphere he must be taught to survive. This is a subtle and moving novel, a re-entry and recovery story that eloquently inhabits the terrain of grief and endurance.” —Antonya Nelson, author of Bound
“With astronaut Keith Corcoran, Kiefer will take you on an awesome American life odyssey from the International Space Station down to the lower depths of suburbia. This is a breathtakingly beautiful and honest rendering of one man's massive life crisis. Part Space Oddity, part Revolutionary Road, this is a magnificently original novel. There are moments in this book I will never forget.” —Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead
“This novel will break your heart and take your breath away.” —Ayelet Waldman, author of Red Hook Road
“Maybe the most beautiful subject in literature, when it is handled with grace and intelligence, is the realization and release of long denied grief. Christian Kiefer created astronaut Keith Corcoran to travel that galaxy of earthbound loss and regret, after one brief and glorious trip into orbit. The Infinite Tides is the most emotionally and syntactically sophisticated debut I have seen, possibly ever. Keith Corcoran's space walk is so powerfully rendered, it keeps showing up in my dreams.” —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted
In Kiefer's debut literary novel, astronaut Keith Corcoran returns from the International Space Station to a house populated by a bare mattress, random canned goods and a gray leather sofa. The astronaut's beloved and gifted daughter is dead after a car accident, and his wife has left him, all while he spent months aboard the ISS. In a house in an economy-stalled suburb, Corcoran contemplates his world, and he is haunted by his near-metaphysical, unquantifiable experience in space. Corcoran's life has always been measured by the fluidity of equations (he's a math genius), which he believes can explain nearly everything. Now the numbers no longer add up. Empathetically drawn by Kiefer, Corcoran is a splendid protagonist, isolated from his lifelong ambition to be an astronaut by grief and migraines. "Everything in his life had telescoped into guilt and bereavement and a kind of emptiness he still did not entirely understand." Kiefer also develops an imaginative and intriguing cast of characters: Barb, Corcoran's wife, who initially supported the ambitious and driven man she married; Quinn, Corcoran's daughter, the first in his world who also saw numbers as colors, as having emotions and characters; and Jennifer, the neighbor with whom he has a brief and unsatisfying affair. Most compelling are Peter and Luda, Ukrainian immigrants, lost in America's consumer culture. Peter grieves for his former profession as an astronomy technician, and Luda, quiet and beautiful, displays a moral intelligence that may right Corcoran's world. Kiefer's work is deeply symbolic, with Corcoran's appreciation for the order and perfection to be found in equations and algorithms being contrasted against the chaos and entropy of his personal life. The narrative is straightforward and masterfully accomplished. A wonderfully executed debut novel, so rich as to inspire rereading, right down to its inevitable resolution, both ironic and existentialist.
