Here They Come (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Here come the hot dog men..." (more)
Key Phrases: hot dog men, fat neighbor, blue silk robe, Miss Turd, Hells Angel, Charlie Bar (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Told by a precocious unnamed 13-year-old girl who bends spoons with her mind, Murphy's gorgeous third book of fiction recounts the story of a poor family's coming-of-age in 1970s New York. The young protagonist's world is populated by idiosyncratic characters, including her equally precocious sisters Jody and Louisa; her also unnamed suicidal musician brother, who keeps a shotgun in his room; her depressed but strong-willed mother; her ailing and confusedly nostalgic grandmother Ma Mere, and John, the hotdog vendor on the corner who trades Hershey bars for a chance to cop a feel. When Cal, her gambling, deadbeat dad, who lives with his new girlfriend, "the slut," goes missing, the family bands together to find him and tries to survive in a world where they can't catch a break. The brother and the girlfriend travel to Spain on a tip that Cal might be there. The others stay home, struggling through the trials of adolescence, single parenthood and deprivation. In thick, poetic prose that edges toward stream of consciousness and is peppered with slightly surreal details, Murphy (The Sea of Trees, 1997) creates a world as magical and harrowing as the struggle to come to grips with maturity. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

The family story has come a long way since Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1881). Murphy's contemporary family lives in a fifth-floor New York apartment filled with maggot-ridden garbage bags. Grandmother is a drunk; the absent filmmaker father fails to pay child support; and the young female narrator (whose name the reader never learns) permits herself to be fondled by a hotdog vendor in exchange for food. No wonder Mother says she feels more like a tomato than a pepper, "a tomato, bruised and caving in and on its way to seed." All of this is reported in a flat, affectless, just-the-facts tone by a narrator who may be incapable of feeling but has the power to bend spoons. Meanwhile, the (also unnamed) Brother, who seems to wear nothing but a silk robe emblazoned with a dragon, wanders through Spain on a feckless quest for the vanished father. This bizarre mixture of naturalism and surrealism is intriguing--and well written--enough to hold the reader's attention, but its meaning will remain a mystery for most. Michael Cart
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: McSweeney's (March 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932416501
• ISBN-13: 978-1932416503
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,129,934 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shocking and beautiful, March 19, 2006

By	LibraryGrrl (Hudson Valley, NY) - See all my reviews

I'm not exactly sure why, but I really enjoyed this story. This novel is filled with beautful and brutal language that makes you stop and pay attention--not that you're ever bored with the characters who wander through this rough-edged narrative told by a young girl living in New York City in the 1970s. Eccentric insufficiently describes this family--the resigned outrage of a woman whose husband has left her with three daughters, the two older floating in and out of their filthy apartment with no real destination, while her youngest is on the streetcorner getting candy from the hot dog vendor in return for opportunities for him to feel her up. The brother's dramatic streak expresses itself in staccato episodes of violence, drugs and the music that is his constant. Add to this mix an alcoholic French grandmother, a father whose only real contribution to this family seems to have been his genetic material, and the father's girlfriend, who sparks a campaign to find her lover when he disappears off the face of the earth. Seen through the eyes of a young girl these characters have a believability that defies reason. Believe me, this is only scratching at the surface. Beneath all the garbage you get a sense that these people belong together and are still a family in a sense of the word that only they can define. And again, the author tells her story with imagery and language that, at times, made me hold my breath for just a moment.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars F**k, what a book!, March 31, 2006

By	Dustin Long (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I didn't mean to read this book right away. I was in the middle of another book, but I just thought I'd read the first few pages. I'm a slow reader, but two days later I was at the end of Here They Come, my bookmark still stuck in the other book on my bedtable. I suppose I understand people who don't see a "plot" in this book--it's certainly not your typical plot, with a series of actions and reactions leading inexorably to some climactic action in the end--but I think there is a plot here. Themes and characters are developed in what seems like an effortlessly precise manner, all culminating in the final fifteen pages of the book. There is a definite sense of finality here as all of the characters are given satisfactory endings to their various archs (though I must admit I was a bit shocked by the end that one of the characters reached in the last three pages). Anyway, I can't recommend this book highly enough. It reads like a lucid dream of childhood, the sort in which events that you were only told about seem equally as real as things you participated in directly. This is a book that I will definitely be reading again.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegant dirt..., April 4, 2006

By	Builder Block "Mike" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

Being one who does not have the time to pick up a good book very often, Here They Come was a lucky draw. I was spiraled back to my own early days in 1970's New York City along with Murphy's dysfunctional family. I almost felt the need to wash my hands when I finished the book it was so grimy, yet beautifully penned.
I enjoyed the rich illustrative language and colorful characters, imagining their despair and hopefulness, while the garbage continued to pile up.
Murphy is a dynamic young writer, blending a bit of concrete Hemingway with a dash of urbanized Pearl S. Buck.
This novel would make a wonderful period motion picture, capturing that thankfully long gone slice of hazy and humid tenement Manhattan with the greasy aroma of hot dogs lingering in the air...Is that Susan Sarandon I smell picking up her Oscar for her role as the mother?
Bring on the sequel!