There Must Be Some Mistake

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By Frederick Barthelme

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$20.99 CAD

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  1. Trade Paperback $15.99 $20.99 CAD
  2. ebook $9.99 $12.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around May 16, 2017. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

A fiftyish graphic designer forced into retirement discovers, via a parade of unlikely events, that it may still be a lovely day in the neighborhood, by “the master of the low-key epiphany.” (The New Yorker).

Wallace Webster lives alone in Kemah, Texas at Forgetful Bay, a condo development where residents are passing away at an alarming rate. As he monitors events in the neighborhood, Wallace keeps in touch with his ex-wife, his grown daughter, a former coworker for whom he has much averted eyes, and a somewhat exotic resident with whom he commences an off-beat affair.

He sifts through the curious accidents that plague his neighbors, all the while reflecting on his past and shortening future. Required to reflect upon his own mortality, he wonders if “settling for” something less than he aspired to is a kind of cowardice, or just good sense.

Beneath the arresting repartee and the ever-present and often satisfying banality of our modern lives — from Google searches to real life mysteries on TV — lies Frederick Barthelme’s affection for and curiosity about our human condition. There Must be Some Mistake is warm and wry, beautifully written, and completely irresistible.

Genre:

On Sale
May 16, 2017
Page Count
304 pages
Publisher
Back Bay Books
ISBN-13
9780316231367

Frederick Barthelme

About the Author

Frederick Barthelme is the author of fourteen previous books of fiction. Until 2010, he directed the writing program at the University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi Review. He now edits New World Writing, an online magazine started in 1995.

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