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Brooklyn author explores a ‘shattered family’ in new book

Brooklyn BookBeat

April 4, 2017 Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Daniel Magariel. Photo by Lucas Flores
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When a 12-year-old boy and his older brother side with their father through a bitter divorce and custody war, they are united by the exciting possibility of carving out a new life together. They move from Kansas to Albuquerque where they enroll in a new school, begin to make friends and join the basketball team, but what started as a grand adventure soon deteriorates into a desperate game of survival. The boys watch their father become an erratic and violent embodiment of the man they loved and trusted. They share a confined apartment in sprawling suburban New Mexico while their father descends into addiction. With stunning prose and chilling clarity, Daniel Magariel’s “One of the Boys” conveys a young boy’s desperate struggle to hold onto the dangerous pieces of his shattered family.

Booklist compared the book’s “scenes of paternal neglect under the Southwestern sky” to “certain chunks of Donna Tartt’s ‘The Goldfinch.’” George Saunders, author of “Tenth of December,” called “One of the Boys” “brilliant, urgent, darkly funny, heartbreaking — a tour de force with startling new things to say about class, masculinity, addiction and family.”

Magariel, originally from Kansas, received a B.A. from Columbia University and an MFA at Syracuse University, where he was a Cornelia Carhart Fellow. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife.

Published by Scribner, “One of The Boys” was released in March.

 

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