From the Publisher
Equal parts funny and searingly beautiful...well worth the ride.” — New York Daily News
“Feldman’s engaging novel offers sublime levity to balance the gravity of his characters’ various struggles, and Adam’s and Marissa’s tales interweave effortlessly as they search for meaning among many doubts and what-ifs.” — Booklist
“A satisfying story about chance meetings and kinship.” — Publishers Weekly
“Joshua Max Feldman has written the quintessential Thanksgiving novel. START WITHOUT ME has all the ingredients for an explosive holiday and a page-turning read: the turkey dinner hastily eaten, secrets and lies, and extra servings of love and dread with the possibility of redemption.” — Marcy Dermansky, author of The Red Car
“START WITHOUT ME is an exceptional novel. Following the Thanksgiving of two strangers who help each other through the catastrophic fall-out of their decisions, it’s a tender, funny, beautifully written evocation of the maelstrom of the holidays and the potential to connect.”
— Zachary Mason, author of Void Star and The Lost Books of the Odyssey
“Pitch-perfect.” — #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline
“When it comes to hitting rock bottom, Joshua Max Feldman is a deft recording angel. Both in his first novel, The Book of Jonah, and now again in Start Without Me, Feldman shines a loving and unsparing light on ordinary persons at the worst moments of their lives.” — BookPage
Marcy Dermansky
Joshua Max Feldman has written the quintessential Thanksgiving novel. START WITHOUT ME has all the ingredients for an explosive holiday and a page-turning read: the turkey dinner hastily eaten, secrets and lies, and extra servings of love and dread with the possibility of redemption.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline
Pitch-perfect.
New York Daily News
Equal parts funny and searingly beautiful...well worth the ride.
Zachary Mason
START WITHOUT ME is an exceptional novel. Following the Thanksgiving of two strangers who help each other through the catastrophic fall-out of their decisions, it’s a tender, funny, beautifully written evocation of the maelstrom of the holidays and the potential to connect.”
BookPage
When it comes to hitting rock bottom, Joshua Max Feldman is a deft recording angel. Both in his first novel, The Book of Jonah, and now again in Start Without Me, Feldman shines a loving and unsparing light on ordinary persons at the worst moments of their lives.
Booklist
Feldman’s engaging novel offers sublime levity to balance the gravity of his characters’ various struggles, and Adam’s and Marissa’s tales interweave effortlessly as they search for meaning among many doubts and what-ifs.
Booklist
Feldman’s engaging novel offers sublime levity to balance the gravity of his characters’ various struggles, and Adam’s and Marissa’s tales interweave effortlessly as they search for meaning among many doubts and what-ifs.
New York Daily News
Equal parts funny and searingly beautiful...well worth the ride.
Kirkus Reviews
2017-08-08
It's Thanksgiving, and two 30-something strangers—"a couple of strays"—join forces to help each other survive the family dramas that lie ahead. Adam Warshaw, nine months and four days sober, wants to spend the holiday with his parents and siblings after many years of absence but still doesn't seem quite capable of going through with it. Flight attendant Marissa Russell, struggling with work and a secret pregnancy, needs to join her in-laws for the Thanksgiving meal while simultaneously trying to mend her fraying marriage. When Adam's and Marissa's paths cross in an anonymous Connecticut hotel restaurant (he's decided to flee back to San Francisco; she's heading to her family), the familiar scenario underpinning Feldman's (The Book of Jonah, 2014) readable second novel is set in motion: Adam changes his mind again and the pair set off on a drive to Vermont, hitting problems en route and alternately propping each other up until resolution can be found. If the conventions of this time-honored holiday dramedy formula are simmering tensions, bad behavior, black-sheep tendencies, and bedrock truths revealed, so it goes with these two: Adam's family struggles to welcome him back into the fold, while Marissa's in-laws, an improbable mixed-race group marked by political aspirations and short tempers, offer the antithesis of a warm embrace. Incorporating psychology and a musical back story, Feldman's novel aims high but loses its momentum, spending too much time looking backward and indulging the central characters' internal monologues. The road-trip narrative line becomes ragged, and sketchy secondary characters offer little engagement. The overriding questions in Thanksgiving entertainments are usually: can mistakes be corrected, new leaves turned, and survival ensured? The answers here will not come as any great surprise. A new recipe for turkey? Not quite.
