First published 2002
Anthony sits naked and confused in his college apartment when three women arrive to rescue him. His mother, sister, and grandmother drag the 318-pound young man back to their Queens home, each convinced she knows how to cure what ails him. Mental illness runs in Anthony's bloodline like a curse. It already claimed his uncle and mother. Now it wants him. The women transform their house into a makeshift treatment center, but Anthony's condition worsens. He writes letters to a dreadlocked Japanese radical, dodges a pack of vicious dogs that may exist only in his mind, and attempts to film his own horror movie. The family ventures into a world of storefront preachers, loan sharks, fake beauty contests, and underground medical clinics, searching for answers. Anthony narrates their bizarre journey with sharp wit and surprising tenderness, even as he struggles with a question he cannot bring himself to ask.
Genres: literary-fiction, mental-illness, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Queens
Period: 21st-century
272 pages · Hardcover · Crown
Content warnings: mental-illness