2008 - Carnegie Mellon University Press Fiction by Susan McCarty Paperback

Book Synopsis

Disillusioned former high school sweethearts must come to terms with their past and present in the face of a tragedy.

It's 2008: the age of the blog, the dawn of social media, and the birth of the smartphone. Obama is running for president on a slogan of hope, while in the shadows, an opioid crisis emerges, and the housing market teeters. Stevie and Sam, two old high school flames who have grown up and grown apart, are brought back together in the aftermath of a tragedy that throws them off the tracks of their lives. Sam, a struggling realtor, is determined to solve a mystery at any cost. Stevie hits on a plan for a "redo" that involves abandoning her adult life to relive her teenage glory days. As both struggle inside the mediocrity of their early adulthoods, the disenchanted world begins to reveal itself, and secrets threaten to overwhelm them. On the cusp of a new era of uncertainty, these old friends must find ways to reconcile their past and find their way home.

Review Quotes

"2008 does an excellent job of evoking its setting. . .
2008 is a layered novel in which teenage friendship leads to chain reactions that continue years into the future."-- "Foreword Reviews"

"2008 pulled me in from its very first pages and then never let me go. By the final act, I found myself devouring it faster than I even wanted to, totally engrossed, addicted, so under the book's spell, it was all I wanted to spend time with. I can't wait to recommend it, to shove it in people's hands, to talk about it with others who found themselves awed by it."-- "Aaron Burch, author of Year of the Buffalo"

"For a novel of such an exquisitely particular moment, 2008 manages to be profoundly and shockingly prescient. Hilarious and devastating, with hometown heroes and forever-outsiders whose decisions and fates feel both constantly surprising and inevitable, McCarty somehow knits together Middle America, jaded urbanites, bloggers, the publishing industry, adolescence, late-early adulthood, climate change, capitalism, and then-and-now into one of the most prismatic contemporary American novels I've encountered in years. I found in these pages everything I want but rarely hope for in a single text, and while I won't pretend to know what other readers are looking for when they reach for a book, I suspect they, too, will find it here."-- "Xhenet Aliu, author of Everybody Says It's Everything."

About the Author

Susan McCarty is the author of the story collection Anatomies. Her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Ecotone, Lit Hub, Juked, Zone 3, and other journals. She is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Oakland University in the metro Detroit area.