Beautiful Children

A Novel

By: Charles Bock

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

The New York Times best seller by the author of the forthcoming novel Alice & Oliver

Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

A New York Times Notable Book

“One word: bravo.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“Truly powerful...Beautiful Children dazzles its readers on almost every page....[Charles Bock] knows how to tug at your heart, and he knows how to make you laugh out loud, often on the same page, sometimes in the same sentence.” (Newsweek)

One Saturday night in Las Vegas, 12-year-old Newell Ewing goes out with a friend and doesn’t come home. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his mother, Lorraine, makes daily pilgrimages to her son’s room and tortures herself with memories. Equally distraught, the boy’s father, Lincoln, finds himself wanting to comfort his wife even as he yearns for solace, a loving touch, any kind of intimacy.

As the Ewings navigate the mystery of what’s become of their son, the circumstances surrounding Newell’s vanishing and other events on that same night reverberate through the lives of seemingly disconnected strangers: a comic book illustrator in town for a weekend of debauchery; a painfully shy and possibly disturbed young artist; a stripper who imagines moments from her life as if they were movie scenes; a bubbly teenage wiccan anarchist; a dangerous and scheming gutter punk; a band of misfit runaways. The people of Beautiful Children are “urban nomads,” each with a past to hide and a pain to nurture, every one of them searching for salvation and barreling toward destruction, weaving their way through a neon underworld of sex, drugs, and the spinning wheels of chance.

In this masterly debut novel, Charles Bock mixes incandescent prose with devious humor to capture Las Vegas with unprecedented scope and nuance and to provide a glimpse into a microcosm of modern America. Beautiful Children is an odyssey of heartache and redemption heralding the arrival of a major new writer.

Praise for Beautiful Children

“Exceptional...This novel deserves to be read more than once because of the extraordinary importance of its subject matter.” (The Washington Post Book World)

“Magnificent...a hugely ambitious novel that succeeds...Beautiful Children manages to feel completely of its moment while remaining unaffected by literary trends.... Charles Bock is the real thing.” (The New Republic)

“A wildly satisfying and disturbing literary journey, led by an author of blazing talent.” (The Dallas Morning News)

“Wholly original - dirty, fast, and hypnotic. The sentences flicker and skip and whirl.” (Esquire)

“An anxious, angry, honest first novel filled with compassion and clarity...The language has a rhythm wholly its own - at moments it is stunning, near genius.” (A. M. Homes)

“From start to finish, Bock never stops tantalizing the reader.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

“Rich and compelling...captures the hallucinogenic setting like a fever dream.” (Los Angeles Times)

©2008 Charles Bock (P)2008 Books on Tape

Poor Ending

As usual authors these days spending years creating and developing characters and only what seems like a few minutes writing the ending. The characters and Las Vegas details are rich and engrossing as was the narration. But I would have very much enjoyed following Newell as he disappears into the desert. Unfortunately the book abuptly ends leaving everyone hanging. Perhaps a sequel in seven more years.

Brilliant - Challenging - Impressionistic

More impressionistic than old master, Bock paints a vivid, disturbing, compassionate, compelling tableau. This is not an 'easy' book to love -- exuberant writing feels a bit undisciplined at times, many characters are from the seamier side -- yet that author does a great job pulling everything together just as the work seems to be at risk of fraying apart. Provocative to be sure. If you are looking for a fresh new voice, this is certainly worth a listen.