A wondrous, deeply affecting portrait of the interlocking lives at an adult day care centre in Southern California, depicting an often overlooked community with extraordinary wit and grace.
'Wonderfully inspirational' PAUL BEATTY
Upward Bound is not a place anyone dreams of spending their days. The dreary adult daycare centre for Los Angeles's disabled community is, for many of its clients and staff, a place of last resort. This includes Carlos, a young aide who lost his mother as a boy and now works there alongside his beloved sister Mariana; Jorge, the gentle nonspeaking giant whom Carlos seeks to befriend (and prevent from escaping); Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy, who pines for Ann, the summer lifeguard at the centre's pool who feels out of her depth; then there's Dave, Upward Bound's director who came to LA to pursue an acting career but now channels his passion into staging an overly ambitious holiday show starring the centre's irrepressible clients.
Framing these intertwined narratives - and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways - is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter, a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers.
In Upward Bound, Woody Brown has created an indelible, authentic, and profoundly moving group portrait of autism and other disabilities, all illuminated by his empathy, sly sense of humor, and enormous gifts as a novelist. With remarkable sophistication, insight, and creativity, Brown depicts a community too-often invisible in literature and society. Filled with characters you won't soon forget, Upward Bound will inspire and touch you, teaching you as much about yourself as the tender, miraculous world behind the centre's doors.
'An unparalleled achievement, and a treasure' RIVKA GALCHEN
'Woody Brown accomplishes the seemingly impossible' MONA SIMPSON
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Implosive and wonderfully inspirational. Upward Bound is acutely aware that be it indigo, autism, social class, or the gamma ray, everything and everyone is on the spectrum -- PAUL BEATTY, Booker Prize winner of The Sellout Upward Bound gives us the world from the perspective of someone rarely noticed or understood . . . Wondrous and distinctly brilliant -- RIVKA GALCHEN, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch [A] groundbreaking debut novelist * Publishers Weekly * Woody Brown accomplishes the seemingly impossible; he gives voice to a character with a sensibility both intelligent, ironic and loveable, who cannot himself speak -- MONA SIMPSON, author of Anywhere but Here Upward Bound is a highly original, captivating, brilliantly observed novel about the power of human relationships and the complexities of communication -- CAOILINN HUGHES, author of The Wild Laughter
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Maße
Höhe: 222 mm
Breite: 138 mm
Dicke: 25 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-78733-641-4 (9781787336414)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
In 2022, Woody Brown became the first nonspeaking autistic graduate of UCLA, where he received the English department's top writing honours. Brown completed his MFA in creative writing at Columbia University in 2024. He lives in Los Angeles.
