Keeper and Kid: A Novel

By Edward Hardy

Book Overview

""Keeper and Kid "is a marvel. I dare you. Open this book and try to put it down." ---Ann Hood, author of "The Knitting Room"Eight years ago, James Keeper fell in love with his upstairs neighbor in Boston, a sassy pastry chef with gray eyes and a fierce attitude. They got married, found a dog, and shopped for cilantro. But conflicting schedules and a real estate deal gone bad took its toll on the twenty-somethings in love. One divorce later, the hand-me-down chairs were separated, the potato masher custody settled, and Keeper moved to Providence to work with his best friend selling antiques at a quirky shop called Love and Death.A new job, a new love, and a new life now in place, Keeper is in a comfortable situation. Business is steady, Leah (the new love) is intriguing and passionate, and Keeper's friends always turn up for Sunday evening Card Night. But one phone call from his former mother-in-law changes everything. And so days later, Keeper comes away with a son he never knew he had, and life all of a sudden takes on a new meaning.Leo, the precocious three-year-old who sports Keeper's square chin, is more than a handful---he eats only round foods, refuses to bathe, thinks he's a bear, and refers to Leah as "that man." For a guy who never thought he'd be a parent, Keeper is thrown headfirst into fatherhood---and has no idea what to do. As Keeper and Leo adjust to the shock of each other and their suddenly very different lives, Keeper begins to let the people in his life in, in turns strange and heartwarming, funny and painful. But some, like Leah, aren't so eager for change.In this humorous and poignant novel, Edward Hardy explores the depths of modern love, parenthood, and compromise. "Keeper and Kid" is the story of how a normal guy receives an unexpected gift and in turn must learn to ask more of others and himself. A coming-of-age story for the guy who thought he had already grown up, "Keeper and Kid" is a sharp and witty account of what we do for love. Advance Praise for "Keeper and Kid""A fine, fetching novel with a good heart. Keeper is nimble and affecting, a tribute to the author's endless comic inventiveness."---Stewart O'Nan, author of "The Good Wife""At once immensely engaging and about the things that matter most: how we love, how we move on, how the past moves with us. Lovely, wise, and surprising."---Elizabeth Graver, author of "The Honey Thief""Ed Hardy's voice in "Keeper and Kid" grabs you and won't let you go until the very last page. Full of local color, bittersweet characters, and a story we can all relate to---the day your past arrives on the doorstep of your present life."---Ann Hood, author of "The Knitting Room"

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312375247
• ISBN13: 9780312375249
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 294 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Great for book clubs!

This was one of our Book Club's favorite books! Made for a terrific discussion. A funny and touching book that draws you in and makes it hard to put down.

Yes, It Really IS a Keeper

A look at Edward Hardy's literary resume so far would lead you to make certain assumptions about his writing. His short stories have appeared almost exclusively in "literary" journals - titles such as Ploughshares, The Quarterly, and The Massachusetts Review. Reading Hardy's latest novel, however, seems to belie that impression. "Keeper and Kid" is funny. It isn't merely "amusing," it is downright funny. Admittedly, Hardy's sense of humor is what is generally called "quirky," and his touch is more Oates than McManus. But it's hard to resist a novel that opens: "If dogs, rats, and pigs can all sense a looming earthquake and make plans, how come all I can manage is a quick stare at the phone just before it rings?" This is a novel about an ordinary thing. A thing, in fact, that has become way too common a literary device. Divorced James Keeper is happily conducting his new life in a new place with a new love. Then he gets "the call." And, yes, before he knows it, he is raising the three-year-old son he "didn't know he had." Before you decide to move on because you've read that, seen that, maybe even done that, give Hardy a fighting chance. He uses that device to kick-start a life that the first-person-narrator didn't even know needed help. He creates characters so eccentric and endearing you'll be sorry to see the last of them when you have finished page 294. Including, somehow, the little boy. Such literary children are almost always annoying beyond description (the only way they can be made more annoying is to put them on film - which might just happen with this book). Here, young Leo is somehow simultaneously endearing and maddening. In the end, please forgive the pun, "Keeper and Kid" is a keeper. It will find a home on your bookshelf in the section with other books about the human heart.

Hilarious but also thoughtful

What I particularly like about this novel is that while it is laugh-out-loud funny, it also has lots of thoughtful things to say about parenting today. When Keeper finds out he's a father, he feels suddenly completely isolated and overwhelmed. It never occurs to him, for example, to tell his parents he is a father or to ask for help or advice from them or his many friends. Hardy manages to convey the strangeness of parenting for a generation who really have had no experience with children and who are too shell-shocked and too individualistic to ask for help. Even more deft, however, is the way Hardy handles the strangeness of a whole culture which is panicked by child-rearing. His hilarious and detailed descriptions of the masses of objects, television shows, and fast food meals that have been created to fill a child's day remind one of Don DeLillo. Hardy is as funny and unsparing about consumer culture as DeLillo, but he's not as paranoid or despairing. This book is "must" reading for any new parent.

Keeper and Kid

In this wonderful, funny and highly engaging coming-of-age story, Keeper is from one day to the next thrown into the role of father and sole caretaker, when his ex-wife dies unexpectedly and leaves him with their 3-year old son, he never knew existed. With the kid, he is now put into a situation where there is no escape, no easy solution. Movingly and with humor and sensitivity, the book describes how Keeper, overwhelmed and in a panic, faces the challenges of taking care of an upset boy. As Keeper learns to open up and ask for help in his efforts to handle the kid, maintain his job and get his girlfriend back, his life is enriched and so are his readers. Keeper and Kid: A Novel

this book's a keeper

james keeper, 36, is gliding through life, working with his best friend at their antiques and salvage store. then two bombs hit: james' ex-wife cynthia dies, and--suprise!--james inherits a three-year-old boy named leo, a child james fathered but did not know existed. hardy shows the sheer exhaustion and relentlessness of being a dad. his girlfrind, leah, at one point simply can't deal and leaves. (does she return? read the book.) keeper and kid is surprising on a number of levels-its sinuous, snappy prose is more layered than one would at first expect, and its emotional power creeps up on you. By the end of the story one is powerfully affected by this off-beat, deeply moving love story.