NoVA: A Novel [Hardcover]

James Boice (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 30, 2008

Grayson Donald, seventeen years old, has just hanged himself from a basketball hoop next to a playground in Centreville, North Virginia (NoVA). The question is, Why? In this incisive dissection of the author's hometown, James Boice scratches its shiny suburban surface to reveal a place formed from "a cloud that slid west and met with the humidity and spent buckshot cartridges and Civil War bones clad in blue and gray to create concrete and vinyl siding and front yards laid in chunks, child care centers and video rental places."

An exciting new voice in fiction, James Boice blends sharp social observations with dark humor and remarkable prose. In both passing glimpses and intimate interior monologues, we come to know Grayson's family, his fellow students, his neighbors, and many who knew him only slightly, if at all. A portrait of a town emerges that renders Grayson's suicide both devastating and inevitable. NoVA is a unique and fascinating depiction of the American suburb.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Boice's overlong second novel (after MVP) opens with a startling meditation on the dead body of a 17-year-old suicide, Grayson Donald, hanging from a basketball hoop in Centreville, Va. From there, the story branches out to portray Grayson's troubles and those of his community, focusing on the mostly affluent residents of the subdivision where he lived. Beginning with Grayson's alcoholic, porn-addicted father and ambitious, devoutly Catholic mother, the narrative plumbs the lives and minds of a variety of characters, including housewife Ellen Eubank, neurotically dependent on her daily bath; schoolteacher and Home Owners' Association member Mitzy Hurkle, obsessed with her neighbor's regulations-violating curbside basketball hoop; and party boy Trent Batchelor, unemployed and living with and leaching off his pushover parents. Despite the variety of their needs, the characters are uniformly self-absorbed, incapable of connecting with others and endowed with desperate, rapacious appetites; the sameness of their situations becomes tiresome. While Boice's commentary on suburban banality is nothing short of savage, it's also too predictable and thin, as if he can't get over his own contempt for his characters. By the end, Grayson's suicide seems nonsensical, but not for the reasons intended. (Jan.)
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Review

The best--the most fully realized, inventive and emotionally plangent--novel to appear in the last five years. --Mike Lindgren, The L Magazine

Stupendous, a great screaming blast of rage and confusion, a hyper-energetic, hyper-allusive, hyper-articulate, hyper-televised autopsy of the million fault lines that web American culture. --Open Letters Monthly

Haunting, brilliant and unlike anything else you've ever read. --Caroline Leavitt, Dame magazine

There are savagely funny episodes concerning random sex and one surrealistic orgy of serial vomiting. --Kirkus Reviews

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (December 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416575421
• ISBN-13: 978-1416575429
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,027,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Boice was born in 1982 in Salinas, California and grew up in northern Virginia. The Good and the Ghastly is his third novel. His first two were the critically acclaimed MVP and NoVA. His work has appeared in Esquire, McSweeney's, Fiction, Salt Hill, and other publications. He dropped out of college after three weeks to be a writer. He would rather you buy his books from an indie bookstore--because Amazon homogenizes and demeans literature with its star system, sales rank feature, and Kindle's typeface uniformity. And they do not pay sales tax. And they actively harm local independent business. JamesBoice.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meet Your Neighbors, December 29, 2008

By 

Kindle Reader (Louisville KY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: NoVA: A Novel (Hardcover)

I bought this book the day it came out as I had been looking forward to it ever since I read Boice's first novel MVP, which despite its theme of professional basketball, was just too good to be true. If you liked MVP, you will love NoVa. If MVP was not to your taste, you will probably not like NoVa either.

NoVa takes place in a Northern Virgina subdivision in November 1998. The book opens with the suicide of a teenager from the subdivision and goes off from there about the family, friends, neighbors, classmates, etc. of the suicide victim. This all sounds like a common plot and deriative but there is nothing to compare this book to. Boice has a rare talent and manages to give each character (and there are many) a distinctive and unique voice. In addition to feeling like you know these people, you are made aware of every weird idea, dark thought and secret longing. There is Amy's husband who yearns for a terrorist attack because only then would he feel alive (he only has to wait another three years); there is Tim who organizes a car pool to D.C. and requires each rider to once a week bring vegetables and dip for the morning ride; there are Ed and Mitzy, the obsessive liberals scorned by the flaming right-winger John Donald. Everyone is sort of horrible and they are your neighbors.

I have not yet finished this book so I don't know what else awaits me but I know it will be unlike anything I have read before. I love this author.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I think we get it - suburbanites are hypocritical morons, May 1, 2009

By 

Sandra "Sandra" (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: NoVA: A Novel (Hardcover)

OK, the opening description of the recently hanged Grayson sucks the reader in, but the rest of the novel just wears him/her out.

In summary, all the mothers in suburban developments have weird personality disorders. All the fathers drink to excess, screw around continuously, and are addicted to porn. All the kids over the age of 10 are stoned and screwing around basically all the time. No one in Northern Virginia has any redeeming qualities whatsoever. No one.

Although I can recognize the self-righteous teenaged angst of the suicide, I still don't have a clue why he decided killing himself was such a great idea.

A depressingly unsatisfying read overall.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars if I had this world view I'd kill myself too, December 5, 2009

By 

suburban mom (NoVA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: NoVA: A Novel (Hardcover)

As someone who has lived in NoVA for the last twenty years, I can say that the physical description of the area is spot on, and I even admit that the geography of the region distorts the lives of those who live here, often not in a positive way. That said, every character in this book without exception is twisted. If you prefer to believe that everyone you know is disturbed, this book is for you.