- Paperback: 250 pages
- Published: 9/1/02
- IBSN: 9781888451368
- Genre: Fiction
Catalog » Browse by Title: S » Some of the Parts
Some of the Parts
The novel that’s changing the way we define “family.” The Osbournes, Sopranos, and Eminem are only “some of the parts” that make up the whole story of the new American family.
What people are saying…
More than 10,000 copies sold
Quality Paperback Book Club Selection (Feb. ’03)
A Lambda Literary Award finalist
Selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program
Translated into Italian and Turkish
“A wholly original novel that’s both discomforting and compelling to read . . . questing characters.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Sharp, funny, evocative.”
—Village Voice
“A sassy, affectingly earnest first novel.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“If you detest psychological journeys into wussy family politics, you will still enjoy this book . . . Keeps skeptics satisfied.”
—LA Weekly
“A wonderfully weird take on the family unit [that’s] worthy of a rock star welcome.”
—Art Voice (Buffalo, NY)
“Best of the year.”
—The Advocate
“Cooper’s scenes have a quirky appeal . . . [H]e deftly captures the seamier motives of his unconventional characters.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Shine a light on this story and its many facets brilliantly gleam back at you.”
—Bust Magazine
“A self-assured and relentlessly honest debut.”
—Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
“The kind of story Anne Tyler might write if she hung out with transgender freak show artists and HIV-positive gay men.”
—Time Out New York
“An ambitious . . . charming, [and] affecting debut novel.”
—Bitch Magazine
“T Cooper [has] set the literary world on fire.”
—QSF Magazine
“A cast of well-drawn seekers change the parameters of family in this edgy, erotic first novel.”
—East Bay Express
Description
Some of the Parts is about families—the ones we’re born into, and the ones we create. In spare, evocative prose, T Cooper tells a compelling story of four. Long-divorced Arlene is lonely and pill-popping; only after her daughter leaves does she begin to decipher the intricacies of motherhood. Arlene’s daughter Taylor is so simultaneously perfect yet useless that she is paralyzed by her inevitable future. Arlene’s brother Charlie faces the unexpected—even unwanted—prospect of surviving with a terminal illness, and his best friend Isak is a gender “freak” to the world at large. These four fractured lives collide to re-forge an unlikely definition of family out of their respective exiles.
Check out A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing, edited by T Cooper and Adam Mansbach.
- Subjects: LGBTQIA+ Interest, Literary Fiction
- Tags: debut, T Cooper
Book Details
Author
T COOPER and ALLISON GLOCK-COOPER are best-selling and award-winning authors and journalists. Between them, they have published eleven books, raised two children, and rescued six dogs. The Changers series—featuring Changers Book One: Drew, Changers Book Two: Oryon, Changers Book Three: Kim, and Changers Book Four: Forever—is their first collaboration in print. The two also write for television and film, and are currently adapting Changers for television (with Lionsgate). The authors can be reached via their websites: www.t-cooper.com and www.allisonglock.com.