The Astral

By: Kate Christensen

Narrated by: Donald Corren

The Astral is a huge rose-colored old pile of an apartment building in the gentrifying neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For decades it was the happy home (or so he thought) of poet Harry Quirk and his wife, Luz, a nurse, and of their two children: Karina, now a fervent freegan, and Hector, now in the clutches of a cultish Christian community. But Luz has found (and destroyed) some poems of Harry's that ignite her long-simmering suspicions of infidelity, and he's been summarily kicked out. He now has to reckon with the consequences of his literary, marital, financial, and parental failures, (and perhaps others) and find his way forward - and back into Luz's good graces.

©2011 Kate Christensen (P)2011 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Critic reviews

"...unremittingly wonderful…Christensen takes a singular, genuine story and blows it up into a smart inquiry into the nature of love and the commitments we make..." ( Publishers Weekly)

"A masterpiece of comedy and angst." ( Kirkus Reviews)

"A satisfying redoing of a man undone." ( Booklist)

What a loser Harry was.

I hung in there with this book hoping something would happen. It did not for me. Harry was a nightmare of a human being….self absorbed with few, if any, endearing qualities.