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Published Apr 2017
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A dazzling new novel from the author of the "weird, thrilling, and inimitable" Woke Up Lonely (Marie Claire).
Meet Phil Snyder: new father, nursing assistant at a cutting-edge biotech facility on Staten Island, and all-around decent guy. Trouble is, his life is falling apart. His wife has betrayed him, his job involves experimental surgeries with strange side effects, and his father is hiding early-onset dementia. Phil also has a special talent he doesn't want to publicize - he's a mind reader and moonlights as Brainstorm, a costumed superhero. But when Phil wakes up from a blackout drunk and is confronted with photos that seem to show him assaulting an unknown woman, even superpowers won't help him.
Try as he might, Phil can't remember that night, and so, haunted by the need to know, he mind-reads his way through the lab techs at work, adoring fans at Toy Polloi, and anyone else who gets in his way, in an attempt to determine whether he's capable of such violence.
A Little More Human, rife with layers of paranoia and conspiracy, questions how well we really know ourselves, showcasing Fiona Maazel at her tragicomic, freewheeling best.
"A literary-pop crossover to watch." - Library Journal
"A treat for Maazel's fans." - Kirkus
"Maazel takes a dark, inventive look at the cost of pushing humans to their limits." - Booklist
"Maazel's clever, incisive prose makes the roller-coaster plot a fun if exhausting ride." - Publishers Weekly
"Listen, skip the blurbs and just buy the damn book. Fiona Maazel is one of the funniest and finest we've got." - Sam Lipsyte
"Maazel is a brilliant acrobat, leading a reader to unimagined sights with humor, wonder, and vibrant intelligence. Surefooted and powerful as DeLillo, Maazel lands it perfectly every time." - Samantha Hunt, author of Mr. Splitfoot
"Fiona Maazel is an explorer, a risk-taker, a mad scientist--an artist, in other words--and A Little More Human is her most brilliant and uncompromising novel yet. Take this book home and read it right away, preferably in your superhero suit." - John Wray, author of The Lost Time Accidents
This information about A Little More Human was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Fiona Maazel is the author of Last Last Chance, called "moving, buoyant, and utterly true" by the New York Times Book Review. She is winner of the Bard Prize for Fiction, a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree, and the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Residency. Her work has appeared in BOMB, Bookforum, Conjunctions, Fence, GQ, Gulf Coast, Glamour, The Millions, Mississippi Review, n+1, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Salon, This American Life, Tin House, The Village Voice, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Brooklyn College and New York University, and was appointed the Picador Guest Professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany, for the spring of 2012. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Link to Fiona Maazel's Website
Name Pronunciation
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