A philosophy of ruin : a novel

Title:

Author:

Summary:

"Oscar Boatwright, a disenchanted philosophy professor, receives terrible news. His mother, on her way home from Hawaii with Oscar's father, has died midflight, her body cooling for hours until the plane can land. Deeply grieving, Oscar feels his life slipping out of his control. A seemingly innocuous one-night stand with a woman named Dawn becomes volatile when, on the first day of classes, he realizes she is his student, and later learns that she is a fledgling campus drug lord. To make matters worse, his family is in debt, having lost their modest savings to a self-help guru who had indoctrinated Oscar's mother by preying on her depression. Desperate to help his family, Oscar breaks with his academic personality--he agrees to help Dawn with a drug run." -- Front jacket flap.

Physical Description:

254 pages ; 22 cm

Genre:

Psychological fiction.

Thrillers (Fiction)

Subject Term:

College teachers -- Fiction.

Death -- Fiction.

Grief -- Fiction.

Drug traffic -- Fiction.

Teacher-student relationships -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Hanover Square Press,

Publication Date:

2019

ISBN:

9781335930668

Publication Information:

Toronto, Ontario, Canada : Hanover Square Press, [2019]

Call Number:

MANCUSI

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003414862	Adult Fiction	MANCUSI	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

An InsideHook Best Book of the Year

"Riveting fun to read."--New York Times Book Review

A TIME Magazine Best Book of Summer

A Vol. 1 Brooklyn Book of the Month

A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of Summer

An Evening Standard Summer Reading Pick

An InsideHook Best Book of the Month

"An unforgettable debut. Mancusi is a writer to watch."--Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

A young philosophy professor finds himself in the middle of a drug-running operation after his personal life derails in this taut, white-knuckle debut for fans of Breaking Bad

Oscar Boatwright, a disenchanted philosophy professor, receives terrible news. His mother, on her way home from Hawaii with Oscar's father, has died midflight, her body cooling for hours until the plane can land.

Deeply grieving, Oscar feels his life slipping out of his control. His family is in debt, and desperate to help them, Oscar agrees to help his student Dawn with a drug run.

A Philosophy of Ruin rumbles with brooding nihilism, then it cracks like a whip, hurtling Oscar and Dawn toward a terrifying threat on the road. Can Oscar halt the acceleration of chaos? Or was his fate never in his control?

Taut, ferocious and blazingly intelligent, A Philosophy of Ruin is a heart-pounding thrill ride into the darkest corners of human geography, and a philosophical reckoning with the forces that determine our destiny.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In Mancusi's solid debut, young philosophy professor Oscar Boatwright has spent his entire life thinking about the meaning of life and dedicates his profession to teaching others how to grapple with questions outside of their comfort zone. Yet when his mother dies unexpectedly and his father tells him about the self-help guru to whom she owed thousands of dollars, Oscar finds that maybe even philosophy can't give him the answers he craves. The day after a drunken one-night stand he barely remembers, he sees the woman, Dawn, sitting in his classroom and realizes she's a student in his class. Oscar and Dawn begin an affair, complicated less by their age difference than by a business proposal that Dawn offers, for Oscar to become a drug dealer. The rest of the novel follows Oscar as he travels across the country to the Mexican border on Dawn's errand, running into more dangerous problems than either of them had foreseen. While Dawn is flat enough of a character to drag down the scenes she's in, Oscar's struggles with his family's pain and his own desperation are tenderly written, and his frenetic spiral into illicit affairs is both moving and humorous. Mancusi's novel successfully depicts the long, mutating shadow of grief and depression. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.