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Gentlemen of Space: A Novel
Gentlemen of Space: A Novel
Gentlemen of Space: A Novel
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Gentlemen of Space: A Novel

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Magnolia Court is not the most magical place in Florida, but to young Georgie Finch, this outsized housing project in the heart of the suburbs is the center of the universe. In this superbly crafted, imaginative, and intelligent novel, Georgie tells us the story of when his father, Jerry, won a competition in 1976 to become the first civilian man on the moon. He also tells us about his beautiful baby-sitter, who has a crush on Jerry; his Jackie O-like mother, Barbara, the long-suffering wife to an everyday genius; Jerry's high school friend Lyle Barnes, running for local office on his coattails; and the mysterious journalist Bob Nightly, who seems the only person determined to get to the bottom of who Jerry Finch really is.

Once Jerry is shot into space, Magnolia Court turns into the worst sort of American media circus, replete with card tables, Winnebagos, cookouts, and telescopes. Georgie tentatively navigates this space, dodging the starstruck commoners who have come to worship at the astronauts' feet. When Jerry goes missing, the camp turns into a vigil, punctuated by potluck suppers and banners. Eventually the astronauts come back without Jerry and likewise descend on Magnolia Court -- in their spacesuits -- to show their respect. All the while Georgie gets phone calls from his father in space, but no one will believe him. Should we? Or is his entire story just that, a story?

A feat of literary ventriloquism, Gentlemen of Space is surprising, captivating, and wholly original.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherFree Press
Release dateMay 11, 2010
ISBN9781439106365
Gentlemen of Space: A Novel

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ira Sher’s Gentlemen of Space is one of those tough-to-explain novels. It’s about an everyman sent to the moon on a NASA mission and goes missing. But of course, it’s about more than that. Most of the book is told from the perspective of the astronaut’s nine-year-old son as he looks out on and lives through the spectacle of media and space fanatics encamped outside his apartment building. It’s about hero-worship, and it’s about disillusionment, and it’s about escape, and a lot of other things and probably even more stuff that I missed.It is not an easy book to read. Everything is described in such a poetic way that if you try to fly over any sentence you only end up having to read it again. The reader must stop and absorb one line before tackling the next. It’s a dreamlike story where anything is bound to happen. The author somehow makes even the most absurd events, like the remaining astronauts camping outside the apartment building in their spacesuits, seem very believable. This often takes even more deep prose to illustrate what is happening. I understood the author’s desire to say something deeper with his story but such wordiness got to be a burden on the flow of the story.Which is not to say I didn’t like the book. It was a good story and, again, somehow very believable. It was Sher’s debut novel and it would be interesting to see if he learns to streamline his writing in his next work.

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Gentlemen of Space - Ira Sher

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