by Ben Lerner
First published 2026
A writer travels to Providence to conduct what will be the last published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend Max. Thomas is a towering figure in the arts who seems to exist outside of time itself. But disaster strikes at the hotel when the narrator drops his smartphone in the sink. He arrives at Thomas's house without any way to record their conversation, yet finds himself unable to admit this crucial fact. From this strange predicament emerges the complex story of three men bound together across generations. The narrator must navigate his relationships with both the aging Thomas and his friend Max while grappling with the very technologies that promise to preserve our experiences but often fail us. The novel explores how we connect with others and what we choose to remember or forget in an age of digital devices.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, contemporary, technology, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Providence
Period: 21st-century
144 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux