Author Description

Some notes are not to be played. 2008 is a year of beginnings and endings, of a new president, of peak oil, of bailout. It is the year when you turn fifty-eight, when you stop going to church, when you start deceiving yourself. It is the year when you take on a new piano student and that student undoes you. It is a year marked by downturn, swerving. 2008 is the year you, Harold, find out just how far you will go to get everything you never knew you wanted. It is the year of your disaster. Part tragedy, part black comedy, HAROLD has been described as "the twenty-first-century LOLITA." Engrossing, enchanting, and, yes, a little bit unsettling, it is the story of what happens when quiet fascination escalates into mad, desperate craving.