Among the Ten Thousand Things (Pierpont) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[A] sharp, knowing dissection of an unraveling marriage…it shows a remarkably mature understanding of the delicate emotional balances in families—how feelings can flow back and forth like electricity in some kind of zero-sum game—and the subtle, irrational vicissitudes of people's psyches. We follow first one character and then another as each tries to manage what has happened. It is an old story, a crumbling marriage, but Ms. Pierpont gives it fresh insights, making the particular unhappiness (and occasional happiness) of the Shanleys by turns poignant, funny and very sad.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times


[L]uscious, smart summer novel...about a family blown apart and yet still painfully tethered together, written by a blazingly talented young author whose prose is so assured and whose observations are so precise and deeply felt that it's almost an insult to bring up her age. At 28, Pierpont has a preternatural understanding of the vulnerabilities of middle age and the vicissitudes of a long marriage…In truth, the writing and the storytelling make the twists and turns of a marriage between such shallow characters more interesting than they have any right to be…Among the Ten Thousand Things is…an impressive debut.
Helen Schulman - New York Times Book Review


[A] tender, delicately perceptive account of one family torn apart by infidelity.... Pierpont’s voice is wry and confident, and she is a fine anthropologist of New York life, especially for those creative types who never quite manage to fit in with cultural expectations.
Washington Post


[An] excellent, insightful first novel...[and] gripping portrait of the disintegration of the Shanley family.... Pierpont brings this family of four to life in sharply observed detail.... An acute observer of social comedy, Ms. Pierpont has a keen eye for the absurd.
Moira Hodgson - Wall Street Journal
 

Pierpont displays a precocious gift for language and observation.... She captures the minutiae of loneliness that pushes us away from each other and sometimes brings us back.... It’s an impressive insight from such a young writer and a reminder that none of us can know for certain what we would put up with in light of this truth.
San Francisco Chronicle


Pierpont orchestrates the narrative with verve, telling her story from the perspective of each family member. There are moments of wry hilarity, and of wisdom. . . . Pierpont leaps into the future in two brief sections titled That Year and Those That Followed, then back into the ongoing crisis, making the details of how this family unravels ever more touching.
BBC


What sets Pierpont apart...is her storytelling chops. The chapters that follow that dramatic opening make it clear that there are going to be as many ingenious twists and turns in this literary novel as there are in a top-notch work of suspense like Gone Girl. The effect is dizzying: as a reader you feel, as the Shanleys do, that the earth keeps shifting beneath your feet.
Maureen Corrigan -  NPR


Pierpont’s language is heart-stopping. In one scene, with her characters suspended in emotional turmoil, she pauses to describe their empty house. There’s even a sparse, poetic interlude in the middle of the book that skips across the family’s lives for decades. . . . Then she rewinds the decades and picks up where she left off. It’s the kind of structural risk that shouldn’t work, but in her skilled hands it lands beautifully. Technically, of course, this is a domestic drama. But between Pierpont’s literary finesse and her captivating characters, it reads like a page-turner. (Grade A)
Entertainment Weekly

 
Bracing.... Pierpont’s killer ending reveals the long reach of the affair’s consequences (sorry, no plot spoilers). Consider this a twisty, gripping story—that packs an emotional wallop.
O Magazine


Fans of [Virginia] Woolf’s insight into the human consciousness...will savor Pierpont’s acute observation of a family in crisis, her deft pacing and deeply human characterization of each member of the family. Among the Ten Thousand Things speaks to what makes a person, and a family, tick, even when it can so easily seem utterly inexplicable.
Huffington Post
 

An emotionally sophisticated, nuanced examination of a splintering Upper West Side New York City family.... Among the Ten Thousand Things rises above for its imagined structure, sentence-by-sentence punch, and pure humanity. Weaving readers through the New York streets with the Shanleys, and in and out of each of their minds as they try to survive the infidelity that’s torn them from the life they’ve built, Pierpont has written a debut so honest and mature that it will resonate with even the most action-hungry readers—perhaps against reason. Her story is the one we’ll be talking about this summer, and well beyond.
Meredith Turits - Vanity Fair


(Starred review.) The perennial theme of marital infidelity is given a brisk, insightful, and sophisticated turn in Pierpont’s impressive debut.... Pierpont throws an audacious twist midway through the book, giving the slow, painful denouement a heartbreaking inevitability. This novel leaves an indelible portrait.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [A]n expertly crafted story of a family in crisis.... Pierpont wields words like beautiful weapons. This short novel is a treat for fans of Jonathan Franzen, Jami Attenberg, and Emma Straub, and shows off an exciting new voice on the literary landscape. —Kate Gray, Worcester P.L., MA
Library Journal


Long-simmering tensions boil over in the Shanley household to devastating effect.... [F]or all the book's sadness, much of its lingering force comes from Pierpont's sharp-witted detailing of human absurdity. A quietly wrenching family portrait.
Kirkus Reviews