By Bill Parry
A first-time novelist raised in Jackson Heights has plenty to celebrate this holiday season.
Matthew Thomas’ critically acclaimed “We Are Not Ourselves” was an instant best-seller when it was released in August and is now receiving renewed attention from the literary world’s editors and critics.
The New York Times singled it out as one of the year’s most notable titles, while Janet Maslin called it “a rich, sprawling first novel, supremely insightful about the family at its core… big, honest, mesmerizing, painful and impossible to put down” in naming it to her list of favorite books of the year.
The editors at Esquire magazine cited “We Are Not Ourselves” as one of its five most important books of 2014.
“It’s a tremendous honor to have one’s work endorsed in that way, and I’m very grateful for it,” Thomas said. “When I was writing the book over the course of a decade, running up against the daily challenges of composition, I hoped only to finish it someday. I didn’t dream about anything more than that.”
The novel, which was published by Simon & Schuster for a $1 million advance and whose movie rights have been sold to Hollywood producer Scott Rudin, is set in and around Woodside and Jackson Heights. “We Are Not Ourselves” follows a multi-generational Irish-American family’s rise into the middle class and touches on themes of love, aspiration and living with Alzheimer’s disease.
The story unfolds in such a way that columnist and Commentary Editor John Podhoretz called it the first great novel of Queens.
“I’m proud to be a part of a surge in fiction either featuring Queens, or written by people who grew up there or lived there for significant periods,” Thomas said. “From Scott Cheshire’s ‘High as the Horses’ Bridles’, to Bill Cheng’s ‘Southern Cross the Dog’, to Atticus Lish’s ‘Preparation for the Next Life’, to Jonathan Lethem’s ‘Dissident Gardens’, to the body of work of Victor LaValle, this is a great era for Queens in literature – and a corrective to the notion that the only center of gravity in New York’s literary world is in Brooklyn.”
Nearly a hundred book-lovers turned out to meet Thomas and fellow writer Scott Cheshire for a Literary Reading and Conversation event at the Sunnyside Community Center in late October. Thomas shared stories reflecting on family, Shakespeare, inspiration, and his use of Woodside and Jackson Heights in his book.
“It was a truly great conversation,” the center’s director of development, Monica Guzman, said. “The people that came that night felt he really got the neighborhoods right.”
Thomas said the event was “great fun and well-attended and a sign that people are excited about cultural exchanges in Queens”and he even added a plug.
“If you look at the fact that it was the Astoria Bookshop that provided the books, (it was) the independent bookseller the borough was waiting for. “ Thomas said, “It’s an exciting time to participate in intellectual life in Queens.”
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparry@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4538.
