Everlasting Story of Nory

Nicholson Baker, known for his exuberantly detailed comedies of ordinary life, now turns his attention to the inner landscape of a nine-year-old American girl, Eleanor Winslow, who is spending a semester at an English school. In this good-natured and very entertaining book, Nory reawakens our images of childhood and captivates us with sophisticated insights. Her observations are hilarious as she tells herself stories, defends a classmate, has nightmares about cows, and generally does her best to make sense of life’s particulars, noting it all down with innocence and candor.
The bestselling author of Vox and The Fermata, Baker has been called “the best American writer of his generation” by Vanity Fair. Like all of his fiction, including earlier novels Mezzanine and Room Temperature, The Everlasting Story of Nory celebrates Baker’s mastery of language and talent for nuance. Here is a funny, poignant, complicated book for grown-ups about the wisdom and strangeness that can exist in a child’s mind.