The Astral is a huge rose-colored old pile of an apartยญment building in the gentrifying neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For decades it was the happy home (or so he thought) of the poet Harry Quirk and his wife, Luz, a nurse, and of their two children: Karina, now a ferยญvent freegan, and Hector, now in the clutches of a cultish Christian community. But Luz has found (and destroyed) some poems of Harryโs that ignite her long-simmering susยญpicions of infidelity, and heโs been summarily kicked out. He now has to reckon with the consequence of his literary, marital, financial, and parental failures (and perhaps othยญers) and find his way forwardโand back into Luzโs good graces.
Harry Quirk is, in short, a loser, living small and low in the water. But touched by Kate Christensenโs novelistic grace and acute perception, his floundering attempts to reach higher ground and forge a new life for himself become funny, bittersweet, and terrifically moving. She knows what secrets lurk in the hearts of menโand she turns them into literary art of the highest order.
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All Things Considered - June 23, 2011 All Things Considered - June 7, 2011
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