The Hundred Brothers

Ninety-nine brothers assemble in their family home in a surreal, comic novel from the award-winning author of The Verificationist and My Eliot. “The Hundred Brothers is a perfect instance of the work of art that seduces you with its beauty and power and then maddens you with its craziness.”—Jonathan Franzen Rob’s there, as are Bob, Tom, Paul, Noah, William, and Nick; Chuck, the prosecutor; Porter, the diarist; Andrew, the civil rights activist; Jason, Joshua, and Jeremiah, each vaguely gloomy; Eli, who spends evenings on the tower; Raymond, who flies his own plane; Hiram, the eldest; and eighty-one more. And Doug, of course, our narrator. In fact, everyone is accounted for except for George, who has disappeared with a woman, to everyone’s amazement. On a colorless day, ninety-nine brothers crowd into their family’s library, knocking over lamps and filling the space with male energy, to deal with a problem of a missing urn—an urn filled with their father’s ashes. In turns caustic and funny, The Hundred Brothers is an unruly, dreamlike foray into the agonies of kinship and the inevitable march of decay.