Life Among Giants, Bill Roorbach
Life Among Giants, Bill Roorbach
List: $25.87 | Sale: $18.11
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Life Among Giants

Author: Bill Roorbach

Narrator: Pete Larkin

Unabridged: 13 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/13/2012

Categories: Fiction


Synopsis

At seventeen, David “Lizard” Hochmeyer is nearly seven feet tall, a star quarterback, and Princeton-bound. His future seems all but assured until his parents are mysteriously murdered, leaving Lizard and his older sister, Kate, adrift and alone. In a mansion across the pond from their Connecticut home lives the world’s greatest ballerina, Sylphide, and her rock star husband, whose own disasters intersect with Lizard’s—and Kate’s—in the most intimate and surprising ways.
 
 Over the years that follow, Lizard and Kate are obsessed with piecing together the motives behind their parents’ deaths, returning time and again to their father’s missing briefcase, his shady business dealings and shaky finances, and to Sylphide, who has threaded her way into Lizard’s and Kate’s lives—much more deeply than either had ever realized. From the football fields of Princeton to a stint with the NFL, from the elaborate dances at the mansion to the gourmet restaurant he opens, it only takes Lizard a lifetime to set things right again.

About Bill Roorbach

Bill Roorbach is the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Flannery O'Connor Prize and O. Henry Prize winner Big Bend, Into Woods, Temple Stream, and the bestselling Life Among Giants. The 10th anniversary edition of his craft book, Writing Life Stories, is used in writing programs around the world. His work has been published in Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, the New York Times Magazine, Granta, New York, and dozens of other magazines and journals. Life Among Giants was an Editor's Pick for Amazon's Best 2012, a Shelf Awareness Top Ten Best Fiction for 2012, and a winner of the Maine Literary Award for Fiction.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Samuel on December 05, 2012

Bill Roorbach is an artist of the human heart, but as a writer, he is pure craftsman. You can see the workmanship in his prose the way you can see it in good handcrafted furniture. Sure, there are moments in this novel where I caught myself thinking, "Oh, I see what you did there," but I don't think......more

Goodreads review by Bennett on January 16, 2013

Grade: C+ L/C Ratio: 70% Literary / 30% Commercial Thematic Breakdown: 25% - Crime mystery 20% - Family secrets 20% - Tangled love 15% - Culinary arts 10% - Football 5% - Ballet 5% - Connecticut Addictiveness: High Movie Potential: 1 Thumb Down Re-readability: Low I'm convinced that Life Among Giants was born......more

Goodreads review by Sandra on July 05, 2012

I believe the atmosphere, language, and writing are what compelled to keep me reading this book to its end. Though those usually aren't strong enough pulls for me without a good story or characters I care about, in this case the lush descriptions (especially of food) were worked nonchalantly into th......more

Goodreads review by Clifford on March 17, 2013

This is a wonderfully written, intricately plotted novel with very fresh characters--from the narrator, a very tall pro football player-turned restaurant owner, to his bipolar sister and pop-philospher husband, to a pair of ballerinas. Sure, there are some far-fetched plot elements, but we know from......more

Goodreads review by Maureen on September 03, 2018

This is the second book I have read in as many months that I could categorize as unique, which is a bit of a surprise, given that I average around 70 books a year. It really was different and entertaining as far as I was concerned. In fact, The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer in 2014, was not anyw......more