CHARLES BOCK
Tuesday, February 19 at 7:30 p.m.

One of the fiction debuts of this still-young year is that made by Charles Bock with his sparkling first novel, Beautiful Children (Random House). "A wide-ranging portrait of an almost mythically depraved Las Vegas, this sweeping debut takes in everything from the bland misery of suburban Nevada to the exploitative Vegas sex industry ... Bock stuffs an overwhelming amount of evocative detail and brutally revealing dialogue ... Bock's Vegas has hope, compassion and humor, and his set pieces are sharp and accomplished." – Publishers Weekly. "Beautiful Children is the best first novel I've read in years—certainly the best first novel of our newborn century. Charles Bock has written a masterpiece: tragic, comic, sexy, chilling, far-reaching, and wise—at once an accusation and a consolation, and a lucid portrait of what is happening at the very heart of our culture, and what it means to be a young American today." – Sean Wilsey.

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