The House of Tomorrow: Summary and book reviews of The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni, plus links to an excerpt from The House of Tomorrow and a biography of Peter Bognanni.
The House of Tomorrow A Novel
by Peter Bognanni
Hardcover: Mar 2010,
354 pages.
Paperback: Mar 2011,
368 pages.
Sebastian Prendergast lives in a geodesic dome with his eccentric grandmother, who homeschooled him in the teachings of futurist philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller. But when his grandmother has a stroke, Sebastian is forced to leave the dome and make his own way in town.
Jared Whitcomb is a chain-smoking sixteen-year-old heart-transplant recipient who befriends Sebastian, and begins to teach him about all the things he has been missing, including grape soda, girls, and Sid Vicious. They form a punk band called The Rash, and it's clear that the upcoming Methodist Church talent show has never seen the likes of them. Wholly original, The House of Tomorrow is the story of a young man's self-discovery, a dying woman's last wish, and a band of misfits trying desperately to be heard.
Peter Bognanni's The House of Tomorrow is a fresh and creative novel that I truly enjoyed reading... The plot of the story isn't particularly fast-paced or driving, and at times it feels slow, but [the novel] is more about the rich conversations people have while practicing musical instruments together, how sharing CDs can be a window into someone's soul and how shared situations create a deep bond between people even if they don't always treat each other right, just like Sid and Nancy. (Reviewed by Elena Spagnolie).
Minneapolis Star Tribune The House of Tomorrow... inhabits a pleasant no man's land between Young Adult Fiction and Fiction About (Extremely) Young Adults. There's a long view of adolescence here, but it's also a story about going from childhood to adolescence that should appeal to any freshman lit major with his wits about him.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. [A] funny and unique debut...an honest, noisy, and raucous look at friendship and how loud music can make almost everything better.
Elizabeth McCracken The House of Tomorrow, as its title and premise promise, marries the visionary with the everyday, the whizbang with the domestic, and does it with beauty, humor, and love for each one of its flawed characters. Peter Bognanni remembers all the romance and awkwardness of teen life and teen music. His first novel is headlong, hilarious, heartbreaking.
Rob Sheffield, author of Love is a Mix Tape
Under the screaming rage of a Misfits or Ramones song, you can hear a heart beating, and that's where Peter Bognanni gets to work - his wild and tender book reveals how much a couple of scared boys can say to each other with a little hateful noise.
Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
I adore this book, not only for its ability to love our ludicrous hearts, but also for the way it makes dividing questions about whether good literature comes from the heart or the mind seem like nonsense.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by KindleKapers Geodesic Domes Punk Rock Bands = Wonderful, quirky coming-of-age story! This is a strange yet oddly real and touching story that explores coming-of-age in a non-traditional family environment, friendship and familial bonds against all odds.
Through first-person narration, we get to know Sebastian Prendergrast, who... Read More
R. Buckminster Fuller: Inventor, Architect, Futurist
If you're not already familiar with the wildly eccentric personality of R. Buckminster Fuller when you read The House of Tomorrow, you might be tempted to think that he is a fictional character. However, Richard Buckminster Fuller was, indeed, very real. Born in 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts into the New England tradition of Transcendentalism (he was related to journalist and women's rights activist Margaret Fuller), "Bucky" grew up playing architect and was intrigued by structural design from a very young age.
In 1927, out of work and grieving over the death of his young daughter, Fuller was on the brink of committing suicide when he instead resolved to make his life "an experiment to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."
As Bognanni describes in The House of Tomorrow, Fuller's optimistic and futuristic ideas appealed to people of the Great Depression; they longed...
A novel about a 13-year-old boy's perilous trek through schoolyard trials, his budding interest in girls and the simmering tension between his parents.
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Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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Can an wiser, older narrator view the past with more wisdom than he might have possessed forty years earlier in the summer he was thirteen? Ordinary...
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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If you're not already familiar with the wildly eccentric personality of R. Buckminster Fuller when you read The House of Tomorrow, you might be tempted to think that he is a fictional character. However, Richard Buckminster Fuller was, indeed, very real. Born in 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts into the New England tradition of Transcendentalism (he was related to journalist and women's rights activist Margaret Fuller), "Bucky" grew up playing architect and was intrigued by structural design from a very young age.
