CALL ME TANIA.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
FAVORITE BOOK OF THE YEAR, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW
TOP TEN NOVEL OF THE YEAR, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
LONGLISTED, INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN AWARD
1974: A tiny band of self-styled urban guerrillas, calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army, abducts a newspaper heiress, who then abruptly announces that she has adopted the guerrilla name "Tania" and chosen to remain with her former captors. Has she been brainwashed? Coerced? Could she be sincere? Why would such a nice girl disavow her loving parents, her adoring fiancé, her comfortable home? Why would she suddenly adopt the SLA's cri de coeur, "Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys Upon the Life of the People"? Soon most of the SLA are dead, killed in a suicidal confrontation with police in Los Angeles, forcing Tania and her two remaining comrades — the pompous and abusive General Teko and his duplicitous lieutenant, Yolanda — into hiding, where they will remain for the next sixteen months.Trance, Christopher Sorrentino's mesmerizing and brilliant second novel, traces this fugitive period, leading the reader on a breathtaking, hilarious, and heartbreaking underground tour across a beleaguered America, in the company of scam artists, visionaries, cultists, and a mismatched gang of middle-class people who typify the guiding conceit of their time, that of self-renovation. Along the way he tells the story of a nation divided against itself — parents and children, men and women, black and white; a story of hidebound tradition and radical change, of truth and propaganda, of cynicism and idealism; a story as transfixing and relevant today as it was then. Insightful, compassionate, scathingly funny, and moving, Trance is a virtuoso performance, placing Christopher Sorrentino in the first rank of American novelists.
"Like Don DeLillo in Libra and Philip Roth in American Pastoral, Christopher Sorrentino has opened the pages of his fiction to the breadth of collective memory, and the result is one of the most humane and haunting novels I've read in years...Sorrentino possesses a searing gaze, a polymath's erudition, and a lover's ear for the frailities of human language."
— Jonathan Lethem
"Trance is a work of startling insight, marvelously and masterfully evoking the grim stuff of true American nightmares."
— Colson Whitehead
"Playful, scathing, gripping, and profound, this book is a meditation and a provocation, full of humor and menace. Sorrentino has broken new ground at the border of fiction and history."
— Sam Lipsyte
"An ambitious, intelligent, and kaleidoscopically opulent book, remarkably evocative of the textures and tones of the seventies. Sorrentino has a talent for creating authentic, microscopic moments that capture the spirit of the era."
— Lydia Millet
"This sprawling work is so ambitious and irreverent that it doesn't fit easily into any genre...Full of descriptions sublime in their precision...Trance is a pleasure ot read -- delightful and often funny."
— Los Angeles Times
"[Sorrentino] remains a virtuoso, and much of the success of this book is due to his writing skill...[He] is an insightful, sensitive writer who makes you believe you're seeing what he's describing."
— Harvey Pekar, The Baltimore Sun
"Big and ambitious...Its method and scope are breathtaking."
— Salon.com
"Sorrentino has something of Don DeLillo's ear for American white noise -- for the hiss and crackle that fills the country's derelict spaces."
— New York Times Book Review
"Echoes of Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Hunter S. Thompson...Trance lives up to its title -- it's a brilliant, hallucinatory fever dream of Americana, one that we have yet to wake up from."
— Seattle Weekly
"A full-blooded lampoon...hilarious, satiric...Trance's charming gift, among others, is respect for the reader's acuity in deciding whether it was a pretty picture. Or not."
— San Francisco Chronicle
"One of the year's most surprising works of fiction...amazing...context vibrates out of the sentences, rather than being foisted on the action from above...It takes novels like this one to bring us back to the moment, to return our icons to us as flesh and blood, almost."
— John Freeman, The Boston Globe
"Sorrentino's vision here is kaleidoscopic, eliding fluidly from individual to individual, taking on a wide array of points of view."
— David L. Ulin, Newsday
"Transcendent...By using the skeleton of what is known to portray people whose minds no one will ever truly understand, Sorrentino gives us a new understanding of our past and future, and a fresh way to consider the ideological movement that can appear so confident in their control or resistance."
— Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Trance is a tour-de-force, announcing a mature and ambitious talent."
— Publishers Weekly
"[A] masterfully omniscent and suspenseful novel. Braiding history with invention, devilish humor with psychological veracity, telling detail with a big-picture perspective, bursts of rapid dialogue with gorgeous description and arresting inner monologues, Sorrentino satirizes with a light yet penetrating touch."
— Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"A demanding, raw, and fascinating epic."
— Details
"Even more than DeLillo's Libra and Doctorow's The Book of Daniel, Trance works to strip the 'event' of its historical cover, to not only humanize it but reduce it to the mundane and everyday...Trance doggedly dismantles the pedestal of celebrity and myth."
— The Village Voice
"A skeptical, occasionally corrosive perspective...Sorrentino's writing is smart and vibrant, slangy when necessary, and always appropriately allusive. Jammed with acute observations and a good deal of humor."
— The Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Substantial...Cleverly reinvents this story with a handsome helping of historical and contemporary satire."
— The Times (London)
"A tour de force...Trance is a bravura epic that unfolds cinematically yet with linguistic brilliance...Tackles unfolding events from a multiplicity of perspectives with intelligence, insight, and a darkly comic flair."
— Tina Jackson, Metro (London)
"A powerful satire of American myth-making and of the hidden forces that work against our attempts to discover a true history."
— John Burnside, The Scotsman (UK)
"Particularly impressive is Sorrentino's protean writing...the comprehensive arc of humanity astounds. Trance is an epic, epoch-defining achievement, up there with the finest works by Don DeLillo."
— The Sunday Telegraph (London)
"Magnificent...funnier than anything so serious has a right to be. Sorrentino hits the key notes of the era perfectly...Sorrentino's solid-gold satire, a contender for Great American Novel status, is wise to both the honor and hypocrisy of middle-class militants. Scathing and sensitive, Trance will make you its willing captive."
— Uncut
"Sorrentino is a wickedly talented writer...His sense of humor is as sharp as it is savage...A work where unmitigated brilliance and staggering prose is interlaced."
— Rain Taxi
"Christopher Sorrentino gives us Trance, a beautifully successful -- indeed, heroic -- attempt to restore to us what is surely one of the great American folk stories of the twentieth century. Trance is a full-blown opera -- an epic documentary fiction, a post-Coover In Cold Blood--presenting a harmony of hundreds of points of view."
— The Review of Contemporary Fiction
FAVORITE BOOK OF THE YEAR, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW
TOP TEN NOVEL OF THE YEAR, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
LONGLISTED, INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN AWARD
1974: A tiny band of self-styled urban guerrillas, calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army, abducts a newspaper heiress, who then abruptly announces that she has adopted the guerrilla name "Tania" and chosen to remain with her former captors. Has she been brainwashed? Coerced? Could she be sincere? Why would such a nice girl disavow her loving parents, her adoring fiancé, her comfortable home? Why would she suddenly adopt the SLA's cri de coeur, "Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys Upon the Life of the People"? Soon most of the SLA are dead, killed in a suicidal confrontation with police in Los Angeles, forcing Tania and her two remaining comrades — the pompous and abusive General Teko and his duplicitous lieutenant, Yolanda — into hiding, where they will remain for the next sixteen months.Trance, Christopher Sorrentino's mesmerizing and brilliant second novel, traces this fugitive period, leading the reader on a breathtaking, hilarious, and heartbreaking underground tour across a beleaguered America, in the company of scam artists, visionaries, cultists, and a mismatched gang of middle-class people who typify the guiding conceit of their time, that of self-renovation. Along the way he tells the story of a nation divided against itself — parents and children, men and women, black and white; a story of hidebound tradition and radical change, of truth and propaganda, of cynicism and idealism; a story as transfixing and relevant today as it was then. Insightful, compassionate, scathingly funny, and moving, Trance is a virtuoso performance, placing Christopher Sorrentino in the first rank of American novelists.
"Like Don DeLillo in Libra and Philip Roth in American Pastoral, Christopher Sorrentino has opened the pages of his fiction to the breadth of collective memory, and the result is one of the most humane and haunting novels I've read in years...Sorrentino possesses a searing gaze, a polymath's erudition, and a lover's ear for the frailities of human language."
— Jonathan Lethem
"Trance is a work of startling insight, marvelously and masterfully evoking the grim stuff of true American nightmares."
— Colson Whitehead
"Playful, scathing, gripping, and profound, this book is a meditation and a provocation, full of humor and menace. Sorrentino has broken new ground at the border of fiction and history."
— Sam Lipsyte
"An ambitious, intelligent, and kaleidoscopically opulent book, remarkably evocative of the textures and tones of the seventies. Sorrentino has a talent for creating authentic, microscopic moments that capture the spirit of the era."
— Lydia Millet
"This sprawling work is so ambitious and irreverent that it doesn't fit easily into any genre...Full of descriptions sublime in their precision...Trance is a pleasure ot read -- delightful and often funny."
— Los Angeles Times
"[Sorrentino] remains a virtuoso, and much of the success of this book is due to his writing skill...[He] is an insightful, sensitive writer who makes you believe you're seeing what he's describing."
— Harvey Pekar, The Baltimore Sun
"Big and ambitious...Its method and scope are breathtaking."
— Salon.com
"Sorrentino has something of Don DeLillo's ear for American white noise -- for the hiss and crackle that fills the country's derelict spaces."
— New York Times Book Review
"Echoes of Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Hunter S. Thompson...Trance lives up to its title -- it's a brilliant, hallucinatory fever dream of Americana, one that we have yet to wake up from."
— Seattle Weekly
"A full-blooded lampoon...hilarious, satiric...Trance's charming gift, among others, is respect for the reader's acuity in deciding whether it was a pretty picture. Or not."
— San Francisco Chronicle
"One of the year's most surprising works of fiction...amazing...context vibrates out of the sentences, rather than being foisted on the action from above...It takes novels like this one to bring us back to the moment, to return our icons to us as flesh and blood, almost."
— John Freeman, The Boston Globe
"Sorrentino's vision here is kaleidoscopic, eliding fluidly from individual to individual, taking on a wide array of points of view."
— David L. Ulin, Newsday
"Transcendent...By using the skeleton of what is known to portray people whose minds no one will ever truly understand, Sorrentino gives us a new understanding of our past and future, and a fresh way to consider the ideological movement that can appear so confident in their control or resistance."
— Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Trance is a tour-de-force, announcing a mature and ambitious talent."
— Publishers Weekly
"[A] masterfully omniscent and suspenseful novel. Braiding history with invention, devilish humor with psychological veracity, telling detail with a big-picture perspective, bursts of rapid dialogue with gorgeous description and arresting inner monologues, Sorrentino satirizes with a light yet penetrating touch."
— Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"A demanding, raw, and fascinating epic."
— Details
"Even more than DeLillo's Libra and Doctorow's The Book of Daniel, Trance works to strip the 'event' of its historical cover, to not only humanize it but reduce it to the mundane and everyday...Trance doggedly dismantles the pedestal of celebrity and myth."
— The Village Voice
"A skeptical, occasionally corrosive perspective...Sorrentino's writing is smart and vibrant, slangy when necessary, and always appropriately allusive. Jammed with acute observations and a good deal of humor."
— The Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Substantial...Cleverly reinvents this story with a handsome helping of historical and contemporary satire."
— The Times (London)
"A tour de force...Trance is a bravura epic that unfolds cinematically yet with linguistic brilliance...Tackles unfolding events from a multiplicity of perspectives with intelligence, insight, and a darkly comic flair."
— Tina Jackson, Metro (London)
"A powerful satire of American myth-making and of the hidden forces that work against our attempts to discover a true history."
— John Burnside, The Scotsman (UK)
"Particularly impressive is Sorrentino's protean writing...the comprehensive arc of humanity astounds. Trance is an epic, epoch-defining achievement, up there with the finest works by Don DeLillo."
— The Sunday Telegraph (London)
"Magnificent...funnier than anything so serious has a right to be. Sorrentino hits the key notes of the era perfectly...Sorrentino's solid-gold satire, a contender for Great American Novel status, is wise to both the honor and hypocrisy of middle-class militants. Scathing and sensitive, Trance will make you its willing captive."
— Uncut
"Sorrentino is a wickedly talented writer...His sense of humor is as sharp as it is savage...A work where unmitigated brilliance and staggering prose is interlaced."
— Rain Taxi
"Christopher Sorrentino gives us Trance, a beautifully successful -- indeed, heroic -- attempt to restore to us what is surely one of the great American folk stories of the twentieth century. Trance is a full-blown opera -- an epic documentary fiction, a post-Coover In Cold Blood--presenting a harmony of hundreds of points of view."
— The Review of Contemporary Fiction
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