Spoonbenders: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Choice 2017

Description

Meet Matthias Telemachus, Teddy Telemachus, Maureen Telemachus, Irene Telemachus, Frankie Telemachus and Buddy Telemachus! They were the Amazing Telemachus Family, who in the mid-1970s achieved widespread fame for their magic and mind reading act. That is, until the magic decided to disappear one night, live on national television. We encounter this long-forgotten family two decades on, when grandson Matty, born long after the public fall from grace, discovers powers in himself and realises his hugely deflated, heavily indebted family truly are amazing. Spoonbenders is the legacy and legend of a dysfunctional, normal, entirely unique family across three generations of big personalities and socially inept recluses - each cursed with the potential of being something special.

Daryl Gregory grew up in Chicago and has lived in various other cities within a few miles of the continent-spanning highway, Interstate 80, including his current home, Oakland, California. He's been a high school teacher, a technical writer, and a programmer, and now writes full time, occasionally dabbling in comics and videogame scripts. His short novel We Are All Completely Fine won the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson award, and was a finalist for the Nebula, Sturgeon, and Locus awards. The novel Afterparty was a National Public Radio and Kirkus Best Fiction book of the year. Spoonbenders is his first work of literary fiction.

This gloriously imaginative novel featuring a family of somewhat reluctant psychics has a nifty trick up its sleeve - as whimsical and eccentric as the Telemachus family is, their hopes and desires perfectly mirror our own. Spoonbenders is hilarious, heartfelt and brimming with humanity. Spoonbenders is brilliant. With the Telemachus clan, Daryl Gregory has created a family that is part J.D. Salinger and part David Foster Wallace. But the most impressive trick in the novel isn't how they read minds. Gregory's real gift is how he uses them to show the depths of the human heart. Did you spend a childhood convinced that you were *this close* to developing telekinetic powers? Me too! The supernatural may elude us still, but there is real magic in Daryl Gregory's gleeful story of the Amazing Telemachus Family. Spoonbenders is also about the power of belief and whether we can ever escape our tangled family legacies - and why we might not want to. A joyfully weird book about psychics and con artists, and the marvels that result from the intermarriage of the two. Imagine amazing powers - but do so with uncommon creativity, rigor, and humor. You might, if you're lucky, arrive at the delicious drama of the girl who can smell lies; the all-at-once-ness of the boy who can't not see the future; the great dilemma of the psychic pressed into service as a spy. Daryl Gregory's novel traces the line where gift balances against curse and by the end, we realize he isn't only talking about amazing powers after all. Spoonbenders is X-Files meets The Sopranos with a real, roaring heart. A big generational family story of longing, nostalgia and humor. The writing is so deftly charming and yet deeply felt. Spoonbenders is entertaining and moving - a perfect summer read. Cleverly plotted and swiftly paced . . . Gregory's novel deploys a cast of odd, damaged, enormously likable characters . . . Readers will emerge from the fray sure they know each Telemachus down to the smudges on their hearts. - Kirkus