Preston Falls : a novel (49 page)

ALSO BY David Gates

JERNIGAN

From Holden Caulfield to Moses Herzog, our best literature has been narrated by malcontents. To this lineage add Peter Jernigan, who views the world with ferocious intelligence, grim rapture, and a chainsaw wit that he turns, with disastrous consequences, on his wife, his teenaged son, his dangerously vulnerable mistress—and, not least of all, himself.

'Brilliantly handled ... at once harrowing and hilarious, an artful chronicling of one man's free-fall into an exhilarating, devouring nihilism." — San Francisco Chronicle

Fiction/0-679-73713-8

Also Available from Knopf:

THE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD Stories

An extraordinary first collection of stories that are distinctive for their difficult compassion as well as their unflinching vision. In "Star Baby," a gay man has left the big city to begin anew in his hometown, only to find himself cast as a father figure to his detox-ing sister's young son. In "The Crazy Thought," a woman chafes at life after the departure of the husband she never imagined leaving her. And in the title story, an embittered dean at a Manhattan college loses his wife, child, and young student lover.

Fiction/0-679-43668-5

Print free Reading Group Guides at www.vintagebooks.com

Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:

1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).