A box of matches

Description

Emmett has a wife and two children, a cat, and a duck, and he wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee in the dark, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks.What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no farther than Emmett's hearth and home. Nicholson Baker's extraordinary ability to describe and celebrate life in all its rich ordinariness has never been so beautifully achieved.Baker won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. He now returns to fiction with this lovely book, reminiscent of the early novels--Room Temperature and The Mezzanine--that established his reputation.From the Hardcover edition.

First Sentence

Good morning, it's January and it's 4:17 a.m., and I'm going to sit here in the dark.

Description

A box of matches is the record of an untumultuous month in the life of Emmett, a forty-five-year-old editor of medical textbooks. Emmett has a wife and children, a cat, and a duck, and he wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee in the dark, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks. What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no farther than Emmett's hearth and home.

Subjects

Genres

• Fiction

Other Editions

• A box of matches: a novelVintage Contemporaries2004-01-01
• A box of matchesRandom House2003-01-01
• A Box of MatchesHardcoverChatto and Windus2003-01-30
• A Box of MatcheseBookKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group2004-01-01
• A Box of MatchesPaperbackVintage2004-01-01
• A Box of MatchesVintage2004-01-01