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The Grand Tour Audiobook
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Publisher Description
A bitingly funny, smart, and moving road novel about two hapless lost souls—an alcoholic Vietnam veteran turned bestselling author, and his awkward, shy college-student superfan—who form an unlikely connection on the world’s most disastrous book tour.
Richard Lazar is advancing in years but regressing in life. After a career as a literary novelist that has ground to a halt and landed him in a trailer in Phoenix, Richard is surprised to find sudden success publishing a gritty memoir about his service in Vietnam. Sent on a book tour by his publishing house, Richard encounters his biggest (and really only) fan: an awkward, despondent student named Vance with issues of his own—an absentee father, a depressive mother, his own acute shyness. Soon Vance has volunteered to chauffeur Richard for the rest of the book tour, and the two embark on a disastrous but often hilarious cross-country trip. When things go wrong, Richard and Vance forge an unlikely bond between two misanthropes whose mutual insecurities and disdain for the world force both to look at each other, and their lives, in a more meaningful way.
As they reach the end of the book tour, The Grand Tour ultimately becomes a moving tale of unlikely friendship that should catapult Adam O’Fallon Price into the company of such masters of all-American dyspepsia as Sam Lipsyte, David Gates, and Walter Kirn.
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“Price offers up an acridly witty portrait of the artist in decline. We meet his protagonist, writer Richard Lazar, as he’s shaken awake from an Ambien-and-vodka-induced coma aboard an airplane…From here, the novel becomes a road comedy of sorts, interspersed with excerpts from Lazar’s novel, the core of which turns out to be as counterfeit as its creator. Price is a finely trained writer, and the novel recalls the late John O’Brien’s Leaving Las Vegas in many respects.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“In Price’s excellent debut novel, he nails Richard’s unpleasant character perfectly, a weak and flawed man who disappoints everyone around him, especially himself…A surprise ending caps off the story.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“This debut novel is, like many of its kind, a road book…Readers will be glad they tagged along.”
— Booklist -
“Adam O’Fallon Price has a beautiful eye for detail, a deep grasp on people, and an enviable sense for where things go most entertainingly wrong. I haven’t read a novel that’s this funny and this sad in a very long time.”
— Tom Bissell, author of Apostle -
“As shrewd as it is hilarious, The Grand Tour offers the reader something to wince and laugh at in nearly every sculpted sentence. This is a triumphant debut, rich in pointed, poignant truths about books, America, and men.”
— Wells Tower, author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned -
“A beautifully written, darkly funny, and ultimately very moving novel about a road trip undertaken by two misfits, who end up much the better for their unlikely friendship in unexpected ways. Adam O’Fallon–Price deftly evokes the tender underbelly of cynicism, the despair and fear in misanthropy, and the fall into failure that lurks under success. A darker, tenderer, more twisted version of Wonder Boys.”
— Kate Christensen, author of How to Cook a Moose
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About the Authors
Rich Kienzle is the author of Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz and Great Guitarists: The Most Influential Players in Blues, Country Music, Jazz, and Rock. A contributing editor and columnist at Country Music magazine for nearly twenty-five years, he also edited their history publication The Journal. He was formerly a contributing editor at No Depression and Guitar World and is now a regular contributor to Vintage Guitar Magazine. His work has appeared in Fretboard Journal, Guitar Player, Request, The Journal of Country Music, and the Austin American-Statesman. The author of liner notes for almost four hundred reissue albums, Kienzle is among the few country journalists profiled in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. He received the International Country Music Conference’s Charlie Lamb Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism in 2012.
Adam O’Fallon Price was born in California but grew up in the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia before attending high school in Tennessee. He first found success as a screenwriter and author of short stories, having published a story in the Paris Review that made it to the Other Distinguished Stories list in the Best American Short Stories 2014 anthology. He spent time teaching English and creative writing at Cornell University before moving to Iowa City, Iowa.
About the Narrators
John Pruden is an Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator. His exposure to many people, places, and experiences throughout his life provides a deep creative well from which he draws his narrative and vocal characterizations. His narration of The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers was chosen by the Washington Post as a Best Audiobook of 2010.
R. C. Bray is an award-winning audiobook narrator with over 180 titles to his credit. Besides winning five AudioFile Earphones Awards, he won the prestigious Audie Award in 2015 for Best Science Fiction Narration and has been an Audie Award finalist seven times. He has been a finalist for the Voice Arts Award, and in 2014, his narration earned a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award. He is also an accomplished producer and voice-over artist, and his voice can be heard in countless TV and radio commercials.