This moving and resourceful novel by one of our most acclaimed writers opens with a newspaper obituary. The deceased is Wesley Sultan, a respectable, unexceptional, civic-minded midwestern businessman. But the novel's first sentence hints of mysterious revelations to come: 'There are at least a dozen errors here.'
Step by step, the book's narrator - himself mysterious - sets about correcting the errors, investigating the deceptive but appealing Wesley Sultan by way of the lives he touched and often manipulated: his wives, his siblings, his
girlfriends, his children. Each chapter reprints the obituary but each time with a new handwritten amendment - correction piling upon correction until the original has been effectively demolished. It seems that businessman Wesley - handsome, dapper, flirtatious, and ambitious - lived a far more tangled and ambiguous life than the one he presented to the world.
A Few Corrections is both a psychological detective story and an epitaph for a vanishing figure - the gallant, sports-car-driving local Romeo who flourished in midcentury throughout small-town America. Written with humor and lyrical dash, it is also a compelling novel that explores its subject with wit and a flowering tenderness.
Step by step, the book's narrator - himself mysterious - sets about correcting the errors, investigating the deceptive but appealing Wesley Sultan by way of the lives he touched and often manipulated: his wives, his siblings, his
girlfriends, his children. Each chapter reprints the obituary but each time with a new handwritten amendment - correction piling upon correction until the original has been effectively demolished. It seems that businessman Wesley - handsome, dapper, flirtatious, and ambitious - lived a far more tangled and ambiguous life than the one he presented to the world.
A Few Corrections is both a psychological detective story and an epitaph for a vanishing figure - the gallant, sports-car-driving local Romeo who flourished in midcentury throughout small-town America. Written with humor and lyrical dash, it is also a compelling novel that explores its subject with wit and a flowering tenderness.
Used availability for Brad Leithauser's A Few Corrections
See all available used copies of this book at: Abebooks UK or Abebooks US
Hardback Editions
April 2001 : Hardback
| Title: A Few Corrections Author(s): Brad Leithauser ISBN: 0-375-41149-6 / 978-0-375-41149-6 (USA edition) Publisher: Knopf Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
Paperback Editions
March 2002 : Paperback
| Title: A Few Corrections: A Novel Author(s): Brad Leithauser ISBN: 0-375-72558-X / 978-0-375-72558-6 (USA edition) Publisher: Vintage Availability: Amazon Amazon UK Amazon CA More details... |
January 2001 : Paperback
| Title: A Few Corrections Author(s): Brad Leithauser Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc Availability: Amazon More details... |
Other Editions
December 2007 : Kindle edition
| Title: A Few Corrections: A Novel Author(s): Brad Leithauser Publisher: Vintage Availability: Amazon Amazon UK More details... |
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