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Summary
Summary
Things aren't going well for Joseph Geist. He's broke. His graduate school advisor won't talk to him. And his girlfriend has kicked him out of her apartment, leaving him homeless and alone. It's a tough spot for a philosopher to be in, and he's ready to give up all hope of happiness when an ad in the local paper catches his eye.
'Conversationalist wanted', it reads.
Which sounds perfect to Joseph. After all, he's never done anything in his life except talk. And the woman behind the ad turns out to be the perfect employer: brilliant, generous, and willing to pay him for making conversation. Before long, Joseph has moved in with her, and has begun to feel very comfortable in her big, beautiful house.
So comfortable, in fact, that he would do anything to stay there-forever.
Author Notes
Jesse Kellerman was born on September 1, 1978 in Los Angeles, California. Before going to college, he took a year off to study at a men's religious seminary in Israel. He studied psychology, with an emphasis on evolution and antisocial behavior, at Harvard University and received a Master's of Fine Arts in theater from Brandeis University.
He has written numerous novels including The Executor, The Genius, Trouble and Sunstroke. He has won several awards for his writing, including the 2003 Princess Grace Award, given to America's most promising young playwright.
Jesse Kellerman co-wrrote bestseller, The Golem of Hollywood, with his father Jonathan Kellerman.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of this outstanding novel of psychological suspense, Kellerman's fourth (after The Genius), 30-year-old philosophy grad student Joseph Geist finds himself at loose ends after being suspended from Harvard (for failing to do any work) and breaking up with his longtime girlfriend. When Geist answers an ad in the Harvard Crimson seeking a serious "conversationalist," he ends up being paid to debate free will for a few hours a day with Alma Spielmann, an elderly woman of Viennese origin. After the two bond, Spielmann offers Geist free room and board at her Cambridge house, where she lives alone. The sudden appearance of Spielmann's difficult nephew, who relies on Spielmann's financial support, threatens Geist's comfortable relationship with his benefactor. The plot builds to a climax that's as devastating as it is plausible. Few thriller writers today are as gifted as Kellerman at using lucid and evocative prose in the service of an intense and nail-biting story. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Joseph Geist sees himself as a man of grand ideas. He clothes are tattered. He owns only a few books and a half bust of Nietzsche. But after eight years of study and professing, he's bounced from Harvard's Ph.D. program in philosophy, and a disagreement with his lover gets him bounced from her apartment. Broke and virtually homeless, he answers an ad in the Crimson for a Conversationalist. Six weeks after beginning his duties, Joseph is invited to move into the grand Victorian home of Alma, his brilliant, witty, and cultured employer-interlocutor. Joseph develops a deep respect and affection for the septuagenarian and, after much philosophical rumination, concludes that he's never been happier. But his idyll soon becomes a nightmare. Kellerman's novel is certainly character-driven, and Geist, the ascetic, intellectual student of free will, drives it until it drives him. The philosopher is seduced by ease and soon succumbs to other less-than-noble emotions: covetousness, jealousy, panic, and hysteria. There's a subtle but gnawing inevitability to this very closely observed, engaging portrait of an eternal sophomore.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
So here's the setup: Joseph, a Harvard philosophy graduate student, has just been kicked out by his girlfriend and needs a job and a place to live. He responds to an ad for a "conversationalist" and is hired by enigmatic octogenarian Alma, who was a philosophy student herself decades earlier in Austria. Then Joseph moves in. It's a charmed life, briefly, until Alma dies and he reaches a moral crossroads. There's her drug-addled nephew to contend with, and a couple of curious police officers wondering about the circumstances of Alma's death. Violence ensues, and from then on, it's pure torture for Joseph and the reader, really. VERDICT The buildup is excruciatingly slow-think bad Dostoyevsky-and the protagonist so unsympathetic that it's difficult to care about his quandaries. Kellerman incorporates clever and classic elements, but his fourth novel (after The Genius) would have sufficed as a taut short story of psychological suspense. This is only for those intrigued by philosophical questions and moral debates. Anticipate some demand from the literary thriller set but hope for a more energetic pace with his next title. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/09.]-Teresa L. Jacobsen, Solano Cty. Lib, Fairfield, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.