HUMAN CAPITAL
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“IN STEPHEN AMIDON’S BRILLIANT HUMAN CAPITAL A SPECTER IS HAUNTING AMERICA–NOT THE SPECTER OF SOCIALISM THAT MARX ONCE ENVISIONED, BUT THE 21ST CENTURY SPECTER OF FAILURE. AMIDON COMBINES THE INTELLECTUAL ACUITY OF A SOCIAL THEORIST, THE STEADY POWERS OF OBSERVATION OF A FIRST RATE REPORTER, AND THE SYMPATHY AND GRACE OF A NATURAL WRITER. FROM ITS VERY BEGINNING, HUMAN CAPITAL SEIZES US AND PLUNGES US INTO THE GRAND DELIRIUM OF READING ABOUT CHARACTERS–MEN, WOMEN, BOYS, GIRLS–WHOSE FATES WE EAGERLY, AGONIZINGLY FOLLOW TO THE LAST, LOVELY PAGE.” SCOTT SPENCER |
About
It's the spring of 2001. Drew Hagel has spent the last decade watching things slip away--his marriage, his real estate brokerage, and his beloved daughter, Shannon, now a distant and mysterious high school senior. But as summer approaches Drew forms an unexpected friendship with Quint Manning, the manager of a secretive hedge fund. Drew sees the friendship leading to vast, frictionless wealth, but Drew doesn't know that Manning has problems of his own: his Midas touch is abandoning him, his restless wife has grown disillusioned, and his hard-drinking son is careening out of control. As the fortunes of the two families become perilously interwoven, a terrible accident involving the men's children gives Drew the leverage he needs to stay in the game.
Praise
One obvious comparison for the book is with Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, with Amidon writing about the financial boom of the late 1990s rather than Wolfe’s mid 1980s. By normal novelistic standards (as opposed to deliberate social caricature), Amidon’s is clearly the more refined work. When compared with A Man in Full, Wolfe’s novel about the 1990s boom, Human Capital is not only better as a novel but also a more insightful and true-sounding rendering of the era. And I’m a fan of Wolfe’s!” James Fallows The Atlantic
"brilliant...Amidon has achieved the rare alchemy of creating a novel charged with suspense from the lives of ordinary suburban families; it's also an unflinching social commentary that has the potential to endure as a clear and literate portrait of its time." Stephanie Merritt The Observer
“Human Capital…offers something of the pleasures that John O’Hara’s books used to provide: a clear and convincing CAT scan of the class structure and pecking order of an American town and a near-surgical dissection of the social, economic, and sexual forces underlying it…it becomes clear that money is a solvent of ethics and that self-interest definitely trumps correct behavior. This is something American novelists have been demonstrating to us since Theodore Dreiser, but Amidon finds a way to make it new, with his uncanny understanding of the protocols and delicacies of class in the plutocratic era of the one percent.” from "Notes on the Merritt Parkway Novel” by Gerald Howard, Tin House #52
“Amidon nails it...if there’s anyone writing about [the suburbs] now with the clarity, insight and honesty that he brings to the task, I’m unaware of it. “Human Capital” is terrific." Jonathan Yardley Washington Post
“The rich really are very different than you and me, and that only makes them more difficult to write about, at least without being snide, patronizing, or reverse-snobby. Amidon avoids all these pitfalls in this truly excellent novel. He’s proven himself to be something above a writer who bears watching, he’s a writer who bears following. By all means, follow him.” Michael Schaub Bookslut
"Excellent...Human Capital is grippingly bleak... it’s a page-turner with that Yatesian gravitational pull of inevitable doom, and—best of all—it made me feel very queasy about my own prospects, in the way that only really good books can." Heidi Julavits The Believer
"Amidon l' architetto delle storie.
A volte mi capita di leggere romanzi che mi lasciano una strana sensazione fisica, per essere sinceri, abbastanza sgradevole. Mi prende proprio alla bocca dello stomaco e ha anche altri effetti secondari. Uno stato di malessere psichico caratterizzato da gelosia, frustrazione, fatica di vivere, scoramento e che ristagna fino a quando mi dico che invece che stare lì a rosicare come un castoro canadese mi posso mettere sotto a scrivere e cercare di dare il massimo, spronato da un esempio così alto. Credo che Max Biaggi provi qualcosa di simile quando osserva i bocchettoni degli scappamenti della Yamaha di Valentino Rossi vicinissimi eppure irraggiungibili. Lui almeno, quando perde, se la prende con la moto, le gomme, i meccanici, io con chi me prendo? Con il computer? Con la mia versione di Word? Pochi giorni fa ho di nuovo sentito quello stesso sgradevole massaggio alle viscere leggendo Il capitale umano di Stephen Amidon.“ Niccolò Ammaniti la Repubblica
"Un moderno Grande Gatsby, incisivo e penetrante, narrato con raffinata maestria.” La Stampa
"A novel of suburban striving, in which characters are distinguished by the things they think they freely choose to buy." Editors' Choice New York Times Book Review
Best Books of the Year: New York Times, Sunday Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor.
"BEST FIVE WORKS OF FICTION 2004." JONATHAN YARDLEY, WASHINGTON POST
"brilliant...Amidon has achieved the rare alchemy of creating a novel charged with suspense from the lives of ordinary suburban families; it's also an unflinching social commentary that has the potential to endure as a clear and literate portrait of its time." Stephanie Merritt The Observer
“Human Capital…offers something of the pleasures that John O’Hara’s books used to provide: a clear and convincing CAT scan of the class structure and pecking order of an American town and a near-surgical dissection of the social, economic, and sexual forces underlying it…it becomes clear that money is a solvent of ethics and that self-interest definitely trumps correct behavior. This is something American novelists have been demonstrating to us since Theodore Dreiser, but Amidon finds a way to make it new, with his uncanny understanding of the protocols and delicacies of class in the plutocratic era of the one percent.” from "Notes on the Merritt Parkway Novel” by Gerald Howard, Tin House #52
“Amidon nails it...if there’s anyone writing about [the suburbs] now with the clarity, insight and honesty that he brings to the task, I’m unaware of it. “Human Capital” is terrific." Jonathan Yardley Washington Post
“The rich really are very different than you and me, and that only makes them more difficult to write about, at least without being snide, patronizing, or reverse-snobby. Amidon avoids all these pitfalls in this truly excellent novel. He’s proven himself to be something above a writer who bears watching, he’s a writer who bears following. By all means, follow him.” Michael Schaub Bookslut
"Excellent...Human Capital is grippingly bleak... it’s a page-turner with that Yatesian gravitational pull of inevitable doom, and—best of all—it made me feel very queasy about my own prospects, in the way that only really good books can." Heidi Julavits The Believer
"Amidon l' architetto delle storie.
A volte mi capita di leggere romanzi che mi lasciano una strana sensazione fisica, per essere sinceri, abbastanza sgradevole. Mi prende proprio alla bocca dello stomaco e ha anche altri effetti secondari. Uno stato di malessere psichico caratterizzato da gelosia, frustrazione, fatica di vivere, scoramento e che ristagna fino a quando mi dico che invece che stare lì a rosicare come un castoro canadese mi posso mettere sotto a scrivere e cercare di dare il massimo, spronato da un esempio così alto. Credo che Max Biaggi provi qualcosa di simile quando osserva i bocchettoni degli scappamenti della Yamaha di Valentino Rossi vicinissimi eppure irraggiungibili. Lui almeno, quando perde, se la prende con la moto, le gomme, i meccanici, io con chi me prendo? Con il computer? Con la mia versione di Word? Pochi giorni fa ho di nuovo sentito quello stesso sgradevole massaggio alle viscere leggendo Il capitale umano di Stephen Amidon.“ Niccolò Ammaniti la Repubblica
"Un moderno Grande Gatsby, incisivo e penetrante, narrato con raffinata maestria.” La Stampa
"A novel of suburban striving, in which characters are distinguished by the things they think they freely choose to buy." Editors' Choice New York Times Book Review
Best Books of the Year: New York Times, Sunday Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor.
"BEST FIVE WORKS OF FICTION 2004." JONATHAN YARDLEY, WASHINGTON POST