{"product_id":"chronic-citybooks","title":"Chronic City","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eMotherless Brooklyn\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Fortress of Solitude\u003c\/i\u003e returns with a roar with this gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called \u003ci\u003eMartyr \u0026amp; Pesty\u003c\/i\u003e. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancée, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInto Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus's countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique.","brand":"Lethem, Jonathan","offers":[{"title":"Hardback (Adult Fiction)","offer_id":46661807112416,"sku":"","price":20.4,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0330\/3125\/8248\/files\/BNCImageAPI_6eac14bb-d06f-42b5-a3d4-edcba668256b.jpg?v=1732399021","url":"https:\/\/agricola-street-books.myshopify.com\/products\/chronic-citybooks","provider":"Agricola Street Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}