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We Are Not Ourselves: A Novel Audiobook
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Publisher Description
The instant New York Times bestseller The Washington Post calls a “stunning…superbly rendered” novel, and Entertainment Weekly describes as “a gripping family saga, maybe the best…since The Corrections.”
As an Irish immigrant in Queens in 1941, Eileen has dreamed of more in her life—but when she and her family seem to be moving closer to that dream, devastation hits and they must learn how to not only hold on to their reality, but to each other.
Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on how much alcohol has been consumed. From an early age, Eileen wished that she lived somewhere else. She sets her sights on upper class Bronxville, New York, and an American Dream is born.
Driven by this longing, Eileen places her stock and love in Ed Leary, a handsome young scientist, and with him begins a family. Over the years Eileen encourages her husband to want more: a better job, better friends, a better house. It slowly becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper, more incomprehensive psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son Connell try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known, and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future.
Described by The New York Times Book Review as “A long, gorgeous epic, full of love and caring…one of the best novels you’ll read this year,” We Are Not Ourselves is a testament to our greatest desires and our greatest frailties. Through the lives of these characters, Thomas charts the story of the American Century. The result is, “stunning…The joys of this book are the joys of any classic work of literature—for that is what this is destined to become—superbly rendered small moments that capture both an individual life and the universality of that person’s experience” (The Washington Post).
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“The novel’s description of theremorseless progress of [Alzheimer’s]…reads like a tortuous descent intohell…Amazingly, however, We Are NotOurselves isn’t ultimately depressing. Written in calm, polished prose,following one family as its members journey through the decades in an Americanlandscape that is itself in flux, it’s a long, gorgeous epic, full of love andlife and caring. It’s even funny, in places—and it’s one of the best novelsyou’ll read this year.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“The mind is a mystery no less than the heart. In We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas has written a masterwork on both, as well as an anatomy of the American middle class in the twentieth Century. It’s all here: how we live, how we love, how we die, how we carry on. And Thomas does it with the epic sweep and small pleasures of the very best fiction. It’s humbling and heartening to read a book this good.”
— Joshua Ferris, New York Times bestselling author of Then We Came to the End -
“Astonishing and powerful…Thomas’s finely observed tale is riveting. As a reflection of American society in the late twentieth century, it’s altogether epic, sweeping the reader along on a journey that’s both inexorable and poignant.”
— People -
“This is an ambitious, beautifully written novel about ambition and what it can do and not do. It deals with the classic American Dream in all its messy complications…The writing does not draw attention to itself, but attention should be paid. Thomas, who worked on the novel for a decade while teaching high school English, has a way with sentences.”
— USA Today -
“A gripping family saga, maybe the best I’ve read since The Corrections.”
— Entertainment Weekly, Grade: A -
“[A] masterly debut.”
— Vanity Fair -
“In his powerful and significant debut novel, Thomas masterfully evokes one woman’s life in the context of a brilliantly observed Irish working-class milieu…Thomas’ emotional truthfulness combines with the novel’s texture and scope to create an unforgettable narrative.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“The debut author has created a memorable character in Eileen, who is both intelligent and clueless, focusing on her ideals and fantasies and attempting vainly to make reality conform to her aspirations. The depiction of Ed’s illness is realistic, powerful, artistically delivered, and occasionally humorous, and readers will be drawn in.”
— Library Journal (starred review) -
“A highly anticipated Irish-American family saga.”
— BookPage -
"We Are Not Ourselves is a powerfully moving book, and the figure of Eileen Leary—mother, wife, daughter, lover, nurse, caretaker, whiskey drinker, upwardly mobile dreamer, retrenched protector of values—is a real addition to our literature.”
— Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding -
“Each page is suffused with a relentless and probing genius, as well as a generous and humane heart, and the result not only explodes across the darkening sky, but remains with you long after you’ve finished the last page and handed it to someone you love. So long as there are novels like We Are Not Ourselves, so long as there are writers like Matthew Thomas, the form of the novel is more than alive, it is thriving, palpitant.”
— Charles Bock, author of Beautiful Children
Awards
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Shortlisted for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize
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A June 2014 Entertainment Weekly “Must Read”
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An Amazon Editor’s Top Pick for August 2014
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A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week, August 2014
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A New York Times bestseller
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A New York Times Editor’s Choice
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A 2014 New York Times Notable Book
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About Matthew Thomas
Matthew Thomas was born in New York City. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he has an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, where he received the Graduate Essay Award. He lives with his wife and twin children in New Jersey.