About
A debut novel of love, narcissism, and ailing cattle
Idiopathy: a disease or condition which arises spontaneously or for which the cause is unknown.
Idiopathy: a novel as unexpected as its title, in which Katherine, Daniel, and Nathan-three characters you won't forget in a hurry-unsuccessfully try to figure out how they feel about one another and how they might best live their lives in a world gone mad. Featuring a mysterious cattle epidemic, a humiliating stint in rehab, an unwanted pregnancy, a mom-turned-media personality ("Mother Courage"), and a workplace with a bio-dome housing a perfectly engineered cornfield, it is at once a scathing satire and a moving meditation on love and loneliness. With unusual verbal finesse and great humor, Sam Byers neatly skewers the tangled relationships and unhinged narcissism of a self-obsessed generation in a remarkable, uproarious first novel.
Idiopathy: a disease or condition which arises spontaneously or for which the cause is unknown.
Idiopathy: a novel as unexpected as its title, in which Katherine, Daniel, and Nathan-three characters you won't forget in a hurry-unsuccessfully try to figure out how they feel about one another and how they might best live their lives in a world gone mad. Featuring a mysterious cattle epidemic, a humiliating stint in rehab, an unwanted pregnancy, a mom-turned-media personality ("Mother Courage"), and a workplace with a bio-dome housing a perfectly engineered cornfield, it is at once a scathing satire and a moving meditation on love and loneliness. With unusual verbal finesse and great humor, Sam Byers neatly skewers the tangled relationships and unhinged narcissism of a self-obsessed generation in a remarkable, uproarious first novel.
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Reviews
"Even as [Idiopathy] threatens to become an emotional abattoir, Byers's prose remains spreadsheet-specific, mock analytical, funny . . . [Byers] has taken a laudable risk in turning his Bovarys bovine and Kareninas sheepish."
Joshua Cohen, The New York Times Book Review
"The Time cover story about millennial narcissism is just the latest in a long and overwritten narrative about this generation's solipsism. But these lengthy articles can never get past the idea that Facebook and cell phone selfies are the problem. With Idiopathy, Byers is satirizing something deeper: the idea that we are all possessed by our desire to be happy, that maybe it is that desire and se
Kevin Nguyen, Grantland
"A darkly funny love triangle set in a slightly dystopian version of modern-day England . . . Byers' blow-by-blow accounts of Katherine and Daniel's vicious arguments reveal amazing psychological insight. Byers also has a knack for visceral imagery, and his clever send-ups of the self-indulgent inanities of middle-class liberals make Idiopathy an entertaining read."
Slate editor Laura Anderson on New York 1