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Book Summary and Reviews of You & Me by Padgett Powell

You & Me by Padgett Powell

You & Me

A Novel

by Padgett Powell

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  • Published:
  • Jul 2012, 208 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Padgett Powell, author of the acclaimed The Interrogative Mood and "one of the few truly important American writers of our time" (Sam Lipsyte), returns with a hilarious Southern send-up of Samuel Beckett's classic Waiting for Godot. Truly a master of envelope-pushing, post-postmodern American fiction, in a class with Nicholas Baker and Lydia Davis, Powell brilliantly blends the sublime, the trivial, and the oddball in You & Me, as two loquacious gents on a porch discuss all manner of subjects, from the mundane to the spiritual to the downright ridiculous. At once outrageously funny and profound, You & Me is yet another brilliant, boundary-bursting masterwork, proving once again that, "there are few writers who understand both the beauty and the absurdity of language as well as Padgett Powell" (Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang) and that, "Padgett Powell is one of the best writers in America, and one of the funniest, too" (Ian Frazier).

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. The novel's penetrating, playful words manage to 'pick impossibly heavy sh*t up' and deliver what one of the characters calls 'the perfect nonsense a real dream makes.'" - Publishers Weekly

"A hilarious and engaging novel, with a strong sense of natural speech and life's absurdities, by the author of the highly acclaimed The Interrogative Mood." - Booklist

"An irreverent, goofball, witty and surprisingly compelling experiment." - Kirkus Reviews

"Padgett Powell's You & Me, mixed with 750 ml of fine bourbon, is the most fun you can have in many states without getting arrested." - Gary Shteyngart, bestselling author of Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story

This information about You & Me was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Padgett Powell

Padgett Powell is the author of four novels, including Edisto, which was nominated for the National Book Award. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Paris Review, and Esquire. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.

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