Spoonbenders: A Novel
by Daryl Gregory
Buy on Amazon"The Telemachus family is known for performing inexplicable feats on talk shows and late-night television. Teddy, a master conman, heads up a clan who possess gifts he only fakes: there's Maureen, who can astral-project; Irene, the human lie detector; Frankie, gifted with telekinesis; and Buddy, the clairvoyant. But when, one night, the magic fails to materialize, the family withdraws to Chicago where they live in shame for years. Until, as they find themselves facing a troika of threats (CIA, Mafia, unrelenting skeptic), Matty, grandson of the family patriarch, discovers a bit of the old Telemachus magic in himself"--
Recommended by
"Following a singular family of dysfunctional psychics between the 1960s and 1990s, Spoonbenders is a wacky, heartfelt novel, cutting its deck across three generations and shuffling them together with the perils of washed-up secret government agents, aging mobsters and long-distance relationships. From sleazy con-man beginnings to moving accounts of trauma and intimacy, this reads like a game of 52 Pick-Up resolving into a royal flush."
NPR Books We Love — 2017 · apps.npr.org