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"This is a genuine Rare Bird book"--Title page verso.
About the author
Julian Tepper is the author of three previous novels,
Between the Records,
Balls, and
Ark. His writing has appeared in
The Paris Review,
Playboy,
The Brooklyn Rail,
Zyzzyva,
The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. His essay, "Locking Down with the Family You've Just Eviscerated in a Novel" was a "Notable Essay of 2022" in
Best American Essays 2022. As a member of the band, The Natural History, he co-wrote the song “Don’t You Ever,” which was later turned into a hit by the legendary band, Spoon. He was born and raised in New York City and lives there still.
Summary
Julian Tepper’s fourth novel, Cooler Heads, is a story about modern love. With a triangulation of lovers and spouses, young children and careers struggling to get off the ground, in Celia and Paul we encounter two people in that pocket of life when the fight to figure out who we are and what we want burns brightest.
A meditation on the limits of what we can and cannot have, set in a city—New York—that would have us think that we can have it all, Cooler Heads is a tour de force and impossible to put down, a literary triumph.