books by michael zadoorian
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THE NARCISSISM OF SMALL DIFFERENCES
Joe Keen and Ana Urbanek have been a couple for a long time, with all the requisite lulls and temptations, yet they remain unmarried and without children, contrary to their Midwestern values (and parents’ wishes). Now on the cusp of forty, they are both working at jobs that they’re not sure they believe in anymore, but with significantly varying returns. Ana is successful, Joe is floundering—both in limbo, caught somewhere between mainstream and alternative culture, sincerity and irony, achievement and arrested development.
Set in bottomed-out 2009 Detroit, a once-great American city now in transition, part decaying and part striving to be reborn, The Narcissism of Small Differences is the story of an aging creative class, doomed to ask the questions: Is it possible to outgrow irony? Does not having children make you one? Is there even such a thing as selling out anymore?
More than a comedy of manners, The Narcissism of Small Differences is a comedy of compromise: the financial compromises we make to feed ourselves; the moral compromises that justify our questionable actions; the everyday compromises we all make just to survive in the world. Yet it’s also about the consequences of those compromises— and the people we become because of them—in our quest for a life that is our own and no one else’s.
THE NARCISSISM OF SMALL DIFFERENCES
Joe Keen and Ana Urbanek have been a couple for a long time, with all the requisite lulls and temptations, yet they remain unmarried and without children, contrary to their Midwestern values (and parents’ wishes). Now on the cusp of forty, they are both working at jobs that they’re not sure they believe in anymore, but with significantly varying returns. Ana is successful, Joe is floundering—both in limbo, caught somewhere between mainstream and alternative culture, sincerity and irony, achievement and arrested development.
Set in bottomed-out 2009 Detroit, a once-great American city now in transition, part decaying and part striving to be reborn, The Narcissism of Small Differences is the story of an aging creative class, doomed to ask the questions: Is it possible to outgrow irony? Does not having children make you one? Is there even such a thing as selling out anymore?
More than a comedy of manners, The Narcissism of Small Differences is a comedy of compromise: the financial compromises we make to feed ourselves; the moral compromises that justify our questionable actions; the everyday compromises we all make just to survive in the world. Yet it’s also about the consequences of those compromises— and the people we become because of them—in our quest for a life that is our own and no one else’s.
BEAUTIFUL MUSIC
Set in early 1970s Detroit, a divided city still reeling from its violent race riot of summer 1967, Beautiful Music is the story of one young man’s transformation through music. Danny Yzemski is a husky, pop radio–loving loner balancing a dysfunctional homelife with the sudden harsh realities of freshman year at a high school marked by racial turbulence.
But after Danny's home life implodes, his mother becomes increasingly erratic and angry about the seismic cultural shifts unfolding in her city and the world. As she tries to hold it together with the help of Librium, highballs, and breakfast cereal, Danny finds his own reason to carry on: rock and roll. In particular, the heavy music of local legends like the MC5 and Iggy Pop. In the vein of Nick Hornby and Tobias Wolff, yet with a style very much Zadoorian’s own, Beautiful Music is a touching story about the power of music and its ability to save one’s soul.
Set in early 1970s Detroit, a divided city still reeling from its violent race riot of summer 1967, Beautiful Music is the story of one young man’s transformation through music. Danny Yzemski is a husky, pop radio–loving loner balancing a dysfunctional homelife with the sudden harsh realities of freshman year at a high school marked by racial turbulence.
But after Danny's home life implodes, his mother becomes increasingly erratic and angry about the seismic cultural shifts unfolding in her city and the world. As she tries to hold it together with the help of Librium, highballs, and breakfast cereal, Danny finds his own reason to carry on: rock and roll. In particular, the heavy music of local legends like the MC5 and Iggy Pop. In the vein of Nick Hornby and Tobias Wolff, yet with a style very much Zadoorian’s own, Beautiful Music is a touching story about the power of music and its ability to save one’s soul.
THE LEISURE SEEKER
Basis for the 2018 Sony Pictures Classics film starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, The Leisure Seeker tells the story of John and Ella Robina, who have shared a life for over 50 years. In their eighties, Ella has stopped her cancer treatments and John has Alzheimer’s. Yearning for one last adventure, the self-proclaimed “down-on-their-luck geezers” kidnap themselves from the adult children and doctors who run their lives to steal off from their home in suburban Detroit on a forbidden vacation of rediscovery.
With Ella as vigilant copilot, John steers their ’78 Leisure Seeker RV (It’s the one with the left turn signal blinking) down the forgotten roads of Route 66. They’re not searching for America, but for a past they’re having a damned hard time remembering these days. Yet Ella is determined to prove that, when it comes to life, you can go back for seconds--grab a little extra time, a small portion more—even when everyone says you can’t.
Darkly observant, told with humor and affection, The Leisure Seeker is an elder odyssey through the ghost towns, deserted trailer parks, forgotten tourist attractions, giant roadside icons, and crumbling back roads of America. But ultimately it is the story of Ella and John: the people they encounter, the problems they overcome, the lives they’ve lived, the love they share, and their courage to face the end of all roads on their own terms.
Basis for the 2018 Sony Pictures Classics film starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, The Leisure Seeker tells the story of John and Ella Robina, who have shared a life for over 50 years. In their eighties, Ella has stopped her cancer treatments and John has Alzheimer’s. Yearning for one last adventure, the self-proclaimed “down-on-their-luck geezers” kidnap themselves from the adult children and doctors who run their lives to steal off from their home in suburban Detroit on a forbidden vacation of rediscovery.
With Ella as vigilant copilot, John steers their ’78 Leisure Seeker RV (It’s the one with the left turn signal blinking) down the forgotten roads of Route 66. They’re not searching for America, but for a past they’re having a damned hard time remembering these days. Yet Ella is determined to prove that, when it comes to life, you can go back for seconds--grab a little extra time, a small portion more—even when everyone says you can’t.
Darkly observant, told with humor and affection, The Leisure Seeker is an elder odyssey through the ghost towns, deserted trailer parks, forgotten tourist attractions, giant roadside icons, and crumbling back roads of America. But ultimately it is the story of Ella and John: the people they encounter, the problems they overcome, the lives they’ve lived, the love they share, and their courage to face the end of all roads on their own terms.
SECOND HAND
Richard owns a secondhand store (“Satori Junk”) just outside Detroit. He’s the kind of guy for whom not much happens, until it happens all at once. His mother dies. He rummages his parents’ basement for good junk and finds a box of photos that changes everything. He falls apart over his mother’s notes on his favorite meal in an old cookbook. He meets Theresa, a thrift-attired junk goddess and animal shelter worker who shares his feeling for castaways, and he falls for her hard. Along the way, he acquires some junk wisdom about love and loss.
Richard’s inimitable, hilarious, philosophical, self-deprecating, yearning voice, and his sharp and loving eye for common foibles and unexpected virtues make for a comic novel crammed full of surprise and pleasure. Second Hand is peppered with insight as unpretentious and satisfying as the unexpected garage sale find. Junk, Richard tells us, “has taught me that to find new use for an object discarded is an act of glistening purity. I have learned that a camera case makes a damn fine purse or that 40 copies of ‘Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights’ may be used to cover the wall of a bedroom. Junk has taught me that all will come to junk eventually, and much sooner than you think.”
Richard owns a secondhand store (“Satori Junk”) just outside Detroit. He’s the kind of guy for whom not much happens, until it happens all at once. His mother dies. He rummages his parents’ basement for good junk and finds a box of photos that changes everything. He falls apart over his mother’s notes on his favorite meal in an old cookbook. He meets Theresa, a thrift-attired junk goddess and animal shelter worker who shares his feeling for castaways, and he falls for her hard. Along the way, he acquires some junk wisdom about love and loss.
Richard’s inimitable, hilarious, philosophical, self-deprecating, yearning voice, and his sharp and loving eye for common foibles and unexpected virtues make for a comic novel crammed full of surprise and pleasure. Second Hand is peppered with insight as unpretentious and satisfying as the unexpected garage sale find. Junk, Richard tells us, “has taught me that to find new use for an object discarded is an act of glistening purity. I have learned that a camera case makes a damn fine purse or that 40 copies of ‘Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights’ may be used to cover the wall of a bedroom. Junk has taught me that all will come to junk eventually, and much sooner than you think.”
THE LOST TIKI PALACES OF DETROIT: STORIES
In The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit Michael Zadoorian follows characters coming to terms with the past and the present in a broken city. Rusty, ornery, and down at the heels, Zadoorian’s characters have made bad choices or survived traumatic events, but like the city they live in, they are determined not to let a bad situation or rotten luck define them, while always maintaining a sense of humor.
Zadoorian’s characters are drawn from the everyday events that come to define their lives: A veterinary clinic worker travels to Mexico to stage a ritual for her lost animals, a veteran returns a flag stolen from a Japanese soldier he killed in World War II, an elderly couple take a final road trip to a mystery spot out west, a junk shop owner tries to stop a stranger with a vendetta against him, a woman who becomes obsessed with her in-laws’ talking dog, and the urban spelunker who finds love and acceptance with a fan of his blog.
Rich with detail and brimming with feeling, Zadoorian’s deceptively simple stories lead readers into the inner lives of those making the best of their flawed surroundings and their own imperfections in a city oft-broken, but always full of soul and spirit.
In The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit Michael Zadoorian follows characters coming to terms with the past and the present in a broken city. Rusty, ornery, and down at the heels, Zadoorian’s characters have made bad choices or survived traumatic events, but like the city they live in, they are determined not to let a bad situation or rotten luck define them, while always maintaining a sense of humor.
Zadoorian’s characters are drawn from the everyday events that come to define their lives: A veterinary clinic worker travels to Mexico to stage a ritual for her lost animals, a veteran returns a flag stolen from a Japanese soldier he killed in World War II, an elderly couple take a final road trip to a mystery spot out west, a junk shop owner tries to stop a stranger with a vendetta against him, a woman who becomes obsessed with her in-laws’ talking dog, and the urban spelunker who finds love and acceptance with a fan of his blog.
Rich with detail and brimming with feeling, Zadoorian’s deceptively simple stories lead readers into the inner lives of those making the best of their flawed surroundings and their own imperfections in a city oft-broken, but always full of soul and spirit.