About this item
For readers of Rules of Civility and The Marriage Plot Joanna Hershonrsquos A Dual Inheritance is an engrossing novel of passion friendship betrayal and classmdashand their reverberations across generations Autumn Ed Cantowitz and Hugh Shipley meet in their final year at Harvard Ed is far removed from Hughrsquos privileged upbringing as a Boston Brahmin yet his drive and ambition outpace Hughrsquos ambivalence about his own life These two young men form an unlikely friendship bolstered by a fierce shared desire to transcend their circumstances But in just a few short years not only do their paths divergemdashone rising on Wall Street the other becoming a kind of global humanitarianmdashbut their friendship ends abruptly with only one of them understanding why Can a friendship define your view of the world Spanning from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the present-day stock market collapse with locations as diverse as Dar es Salaam Boston Shenzhen and Fishers Island A Dual Inheritance asks this question as it follows not only these two men but the complicated women in their vastly different lives And as Ed and Hugh grow farther and farther apart they remain uniquelymdasheven surprisinglymdashconnected Praise for A Dual Inheritance ldquoA big captivating sweep of a romance a searching exploration of class and destiny in late-twentieth-century AmericardquomdashJennifer Egan ldquoThe best book about male friendship written this young centuryrdquomdashDetails ldquoA warm smart enjoyably complex novel Both Hugh and Ed are lonely searchers and Hershonrsquos skill in rendering each of them as flawed individuals is what makes the novel so readable and so rich A Dual Inheritance is an old-fashioned social novel that feels fresh because of its deft clear-eyed approach to still-unspoken rules about ethnicity money and identityrdquomdashSan Francisco Chronicle ldquoAn absorbing fully-realized novel Hershon renders the bookrsquos many locales with a nuanced appreciation for the way environment emerges out of the confluence of physical detail and social experience A Dual Inheritance never lets its readers forget they are reading a well-crafted novel and as a well-crafted novel it fully satisfiesrdquomdashThe Boston GlobeldquoThis marvelous novel is a mix of heartache and history Think of Anne Tyler and Tom Wolfe bothrdquomdashVictor LaValle author of The Devil in SilverldquoAn engrossing sagardquomdashVogue ldquoHershon artfully guides us through the lives of Ed and Hugh college buddies who meet at Harvard in the rsquos shifting between their perspectives through adulthood to detail their lingering impact on one anotherrsquos lives in such a way that itrsquoll make you take a second look at all of your relationshipsrdquomdashGQ ldquoLet this story of two Harvard menrsquos unexpected friendship and its sudden end transport you through time beginning on Harvardrsquos campus in and placerdquomdashThe Huffington Post ldquoA richly composed portrait of familial gravity and the wobbly orbits that bring us together again and againrdquomdashKirkus Reviews ldquoThis thought-provoking generational tale is a heartfelt and beautiful story of an unlikely friendship that fades at times but never seems to go awayrdquomdashLong Island Press.
About the Author
Joanna Hershon is the author of four novels: Swimming, The Outside of August, The German Bride, and A Dual Inheritance. Her writing has appeared in (among other places) The New York Times, One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, the literary anthologies Brooklyn Was Mine, Freud's Blind Spot, and Berlin Stories-- a multimedia journal for NPR Worldwide. She's an adjunct assistant professor in the Creative Writing department at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the painter Derek Buckner, and their twin sons.
Interested in learning more? Go to www.joannahershon.com
