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The Laments by George Hagen
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The Laments

A Novel

$19.95

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Richard Matthews
Length 10 hours 54 minutes
Language English
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Meet the Laments—the affably dysfunctional globetrotting family at the center of George Hagen’s exuberant debut novel.

Howard is an engineer who dreams of irrigating the Sahara and lives by the motto “Laments move!” His wife Julia is a fiery spirit who must balance her husband’s oddly peripatetic nature with unexpected aspirations of her own. And Will is the “waif with a paper-thin heart” who is given to Howard and Julia in return for their own child who has been lost in a bizarre maternity ward mishap. As Will makes his way from infancy to manhood in a family that careens from continent to continent, one wonders where the Laments will ever belong.

In Bahrain, Howard takes a job with an oil company and young Will makes his first friend. But in short order he is wrenched off to another land, his mother’s complicated friendship with the American siren Trixie Howitzer causing the family to bolt. In Northern Rhodesia, during its last days as a white colony, the twin enfants terribles Marcus and Julius are born, and Will falls for the gardener’s daughter, a girl so vain that she admires her image in the lid of a biscuit tin. But soon the family’s life is upturned again, thie time by their neighbor Major Buck Quinn, with his suburban tirades against black self-rule. Envisioning a more civilized life on “the sceptered isle,” the Laments board an ocean liner bound for England. Alas, poor Will is greeted by the tribal ferocity of his schoolmates and a society fixated on the Blitz. No sooner has he succumbed to British pop culture in the guise of mop-top Sally Byrd and her stacks of 45s, than the Laments uproot themselves once again, and it’s off to New Jersey, where life deals crisis and opportunity in equal measure.

Undeniably eccentric, the Laments are also universal. Every family moves on in life. Children grow up, things are left behind; there is always something to lament. Through the Lament’s restlessness, responses to adversity, and especially their unwieldy love for one another, George Hagen gives us a portrait of every family that is funny, tragic, and improbably true.

George Hagen is the author of two novels for adults. The Laments—Washington Post bestseller and recipient of the William Saroyan International Prize for writing—has been compared to the work of John Irving and Ann Tyler and described by Publishers Weekly as "a funny, touching novel about the meaning of family." Tom Bedlam was called "a Victorian three-decker novel [that] shines with contemporary clarity and moves at the speed of The Sopranos" by the Los Angeles Times. Hagen had lived on three continents by the time he was 12. The father of three children, he now lives in Brooklyn. For more information, visit georgehagen.com.

Richard Matthews is a performer who has narrated many audiobooks, including A Short History of Nearly Everything1984, and The Count of Monte Cristo.

George Hagen is the author of two novels for adults. The Laments—Washington Post bestseller and recipient of the William Saroyan International Prize for writing—has been compared to the work of John Irving and Ann Tyler and described by Publishers Weekly as "a funny, touching novel about the meaning of family." Tom Bedlam was called "a Victorian three-decker novel [that] shines with contemporary clarity and moves at the speed of The Sopranos" by the Los Angeles Times. Hagen had lived on three continents by the time he was 12. The father of three children, he now lives in Brooklyn. For more information, visit georgehagen.com.

Richard Matthews is a performer who has narrated many audiobooks, including A Short History of Nearly Everything1984, and The Count of Monte Cristo.

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Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of local bookstores with the promo code SWITCH, you’ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

Make the switch

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You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

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Reviews

The Laments is a fine novel, about family, migration, identity, and the struggle to find and hold on to it. It is also hugely entertaining and very, very funny.”
—Roddy Doyle, author of The Barrytown Trilogy

“A vital international journey through the vicissitudes of family life. This story, centering on the timeless theme of a child swapped at birth, is immensely readable, funny, and touching—a complete joy.”
—Elizabeth Strout, author of Amy and Isabelle

“George Hagen’s highly entertaining debut novel features an irresistibly headstrong family, a global sweep, and not only a sense of loss and displacement that’s perfectly in tune with the world we live in but also a full measure of resilient humanity.”
—Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook
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