The Last Sweet Taste - by Craig Nova (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"I seem tough, but I'm waiting for the one who can see right through me. I get a little shaky thinking about this possibility," Anna Burke says. After receiving a serious health diagnosis, Anna isn't going to take it lying down. Instead, she sets out in search of something sweet and solid, an undeniable truth she can hold on to as she runs away from her home in the city, landing in a small town in Vermont.

There, Anna meets Noah and Cyrus Wolfe, a father-and-son duo of dynamiters hired to destroy the worst ice dam the town has faced in years. But when the blast goes wrong, neither father nor son can finish the job, and the only person who might be able to save the town is Anna herself.

The Last Sweet Taste is a story of discovering innocence in a difficult world. As Anna searches for truth and comfort, she finds herself among people whose quiet, humble lives offer the sweetness she has been longing for. A resonant story of resilience, unexpected love, and the small triumphs that arrive when everything seems lost, The Last Sweet Taste, as always, is worth the wait.

Review Quotes

In Praise of Craig Nova:

"I wouldn't delay reading a novel of Nova's, not even to complete one of my own." -- John Irving

"Of the writers writing in America today, Nova is one of the very greatest." -- Michael Silverblatt, the host of Bookworm on KCRW

"[Nova's fiction] is so powerful, so alive, it is a wonder that turning its pages doesn't somehow burn one's hands." --The New York Times

"He's one of our very best writers . . . When Craig's not looking at America head-on, it's in his peripheral vision. He's amazing."--Ann Beattie

"I've read no better, no more bitter and ironic understanding of professional cunning and ambition since Joseph Heller's Something Happened. I've read no fuller mixture of human frailties, no more deft revelation of the chinks in moral armor since Robertson Davies's Leaven of Malice. I've read no more comic and painful exploration of the disasters of loneliness since Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark. As a virtuoso handling of first-person narration, The Good Son is as marvelous as Andre Brink's recent A Chain of Voices....A pitch-perfect performance." --John Irving, The New York Times)

"The Good Son is the work of an artist in full command, and those of you entering it for the first time can only be envied." -- Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

"What sticks in the mind long after the novel has been read, is its intelligence, compassion and -- to introduce another old-fashioned idea -- character. Craig Nova is a fine writer, one of our best, and if you haven't read him, the loss is yours." -- Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

"The pacing of Cruisers is compulsive and relentless." --The Boston Globe (for Cruisers, 2004)

"Once again, Craig Nova proves that his writing can be just as moving, just as entertaining and insightful, as that of the finest writers in anyone's literary canon." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch (about The Informer, 2010)

"Long-awaited is an overused phrase in publisher's promotional blurbs, but Nova's follow-up to his acclaimed 1982 novel, The Good Son merits that description as much as any recent fiction, and it has been well worth the lengthy wait." -- Booklist (about All the Good Dead Yale Men, 2013)

About the Author

Craig Nova is the author of fourteen novels, which have been translated into 10 languages. He has had an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harper-Saxton Prize (previous recipients have been James Baldwin and Sylvia Plath), multiple awards from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and other prizes. His short fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Men's Journal, Best American Short Story series, and other publications. As a screenwriter he has worked for Touchstone Pictures (a division of the Walt Disney Company), Amblin Entertainment, and other producers. A film was made in 2018 from his novel, Wetware. Nova is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of North Carolina in Hillsborough.