Between You and Me: a novel by Scott Nadelson

 

Scott Nadelson is the author of three story collections, most recently Aftermath, and a memoir, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress. Winner of the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and an Oregon Book Award, he teaches at Willamette University and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.

 


Between You and Me: a novel by Scott Nadelson

Paul Haberman was happy living alone in the city until he met Cynthia, an enchanting suburban single mother. After he moves to New Jersey to marry her, Paul's life reshapes itself dramatically around his new family. In this episodic novel, where we meet Paul every two years throughout the course of his marriage, Scott Nadelson reveals the quiet beauty, doubt, and longing of a blended family's life in the unglamorous American suburbs.

"Scott Nadelson gives us a true Gogolian hero in Paul Haberman, a small, yearning, middle-aged suburbanite in New Jersey, beset by vague terrors and also by a trembling awareness of all the world has to offer, while not knowing how to ask, most of the time, for any of it. Haberman is a radiant character and Between You and Me is a hilarious, poignant, darkly glittering gem of a novel."
—Suzanne Berne, author of A Crime in the Neighborhood

"What a wonderful and affecting novel Scott Nadelson has written. As is clear from the hilarious opening standoff in a New Jersey mall parking lot, the author has a talent for zooming in - with uncanny psychological precision—on the small, defining moments of individual experience. And yet the story that results, as we revisit Paul Haberman over two decades of his adulthood, becomes that of a universal everyman, whose equivocal life seems more and more resplendent as we follow him through the years."
—Frederick Reiken, author of Day for Night

"Scott Nadelson's novel, Between You and Me, grows on you, gains weight chapter by chapter as its hero, Paul Haberman--step-father, husband, lawyer, son and brother—stumbles his way through passive and passionless middle age to stand, finally, in his own skin as a man and to affirm his life. The ending is beautiful. The beginning and middle pieces add up, finally, like any good befuddling adventure, to something astounding. Something extraordinary. Yes, I said, when I'd read the last pages, yes."
—David Allaan Cates, author of Tom Connor's Gift

"Here’s what Scott Nadelson knows: that the terrors and ecstasies of everyday life can bring you to your knees; that even a mild-mannered Jewish lawyer can be a hero. Like Yates’ Revolutionary Road or Updike’s Rabbit series, Between You and Me is a beautifully written and moving chronicle of American suburban angst, though Nadelson’s version comes with a wonderfully refreshing dose of humor and gratitude for the blessings of family, health, hearth, and love."
—Eileen Pollack, author of Breaking and Entering

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ISBN: 978-1-938126-33-8
Publication Date: November 10, 2015

Price: $15.95
Trade Paperback Original
256 pages
Distributed to the trade by Ingram Distribution
eBook ISBN: 978-1-938126-34-5