Description
From Booklist Joseph Geist sees himself as a man of grand ideas. He clothes are tattered. He owns only a few books and a half bust of Nietzsche. But after eight years of study and professing, he’s bounced from Harvard’s Ph.D. program in philosophy, and a disagreement with his lover gets him bounced from her apartment. Broke and virtually homeless, he answers an ad in the Crimson for a “Conversationalist.” Six weeks after beginning his duties, Joseph is invited to move into the grand Victorian home of Alma, his brilliant, witty, and cultured employer-interlocutor. Joseph develops a deep respect and affection for the septuagenarian and, after much philosophical rumination, concludes that he’s never been happier. But his idyll soon becomes a nightmare. Kellerman’s novel is certainly character-driven, and Geist, the ascetic, intellectual student of free will, drives it—until it drives him. The philosopher is seduced by ease and soon succumbs to other less-than-noble emotions: covetousness, jealousy, panic, and hysteria. There’s a subtle but gnawing inevitability to this very closely observed, engaging portrait of an eternal sophomore. --Thomas Gaughan Jesse Kellerman is the author of three previous novels, The Genius, Trouble , and Sunstroke . His plays have also won several awards, including the 2003 Princess Grace Award, given to America's most promising young playwright. He lives in La Jolla, California.
Features & Highlights
- A masterful, inventive thriller from a remarkably assured and always surprising young writer.
- Perpetual graduate student Joseph Geist is at his wit's end. Recently kicked out of their shared apartment by his girlfriend, he's left with little more than a half bust of Nietzsche's head and the realization that he's homeless and unemployed. He's hit a dead end on his dissertation; his funding has been cut off. He doesn't even have a phone. Desperate for some source of income, he searches the local newspaper and finds a curious ad: CONVERSATIONALIST SOUGHT. SERIOUS APPLICANTS ONLY. PLEASE CALL 617-XXX-XXXX BETWEEN SEVEN A.M. AND TWO P.M. NO SOLICITORS. And so Joseph meets Alma Spielman: a woman who, with her old-world ways and razor-sharp mind, is his intellectual soul mate. How is he to know that what seems to be the best decision of his life is the one that seals his fate?
