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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Memoirs

EPILOGUE

Will Boast

A Memoir

In the tradition of Andre Dubus III’s Townie, an astonishing family story heralding the arrival of a raw, elegiac new voice.

It is rare enough to find a prize-winning young writer of Will Boast’s spellbinding talent, but to find one with such an intensely dramatic personal story is a once-in-a-generation discovery. After having already lost his mother and only brother, twenty-four-year old Boast finds himself absolutely alone when his father dies of alcoholism. Numbly settling the matters of his father’s estate, Boast is shaken from his grief when he stumbles upon documents revealing a secret his father had thought to take to his grave: he ’d had another family entirely, a wife and two sons. What Boast discovers about his father as he tracks down these strangers forces him to reimagine the fundamental truths of his childhood and to wonder whether, after everything, he has a chance to rewrite his family story.

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Book Published 2014-09-15 by Liveright

Comments

Sad and lovely, honest and unsentimental, EPILOGUE is a story of life after loss, of untimely endings and unexpected beginnings. What if you lost your family, only to discover you had another? Will Boast’s unforgettable memoir explores this seemingly impossible question, in a straightforward yet lyrical language that infuses these pages with both wistfulness and hope. Like the stories in his excellent debut, POWER BALLADS, EPILOGUE will stay with you like a favorite song of beautiful and bittersweet heartbreak.

EPILOGUE is a moving meditation on the enduring mysteries of family, the surprising possibilities of loss, and the deep resilience of an individual. With piercing clarity and wisdom, Will Boast reveals the unexpected within the unthinkable.

Granta (UK)

Don’t let the title of Will Boast’s magnificent memoir fool you—EPILOGUE is about beginnings as much as endings, discovering as much as losing family. It's honest, heartbreaking, gorgeously written, and hands down the most moving book I've read so far this year.

Few 24-year-olds have endured the unimaginable losses Will Boast suffered by that age; fewer still have the artistic poise and sheer visceral honesty to redeem that suffering by transforming it into art. As he grapples with a father-son relationship as complex and tortured as that in Knausgaard's MY STRUGGLE, Boast faces his raw emotional material ruthlessly, translating his extraordinary experiences to the page with a restrained lyricism and a musician’s ear for rhythm. Boast's story will break your heart; his prose will make it sing.

A brave, brilliant, masterfully crafted story about an ordinary family's extraordinary collision of tragedies and secrets. Will Boast's efforts to write his family's epilogue—to forge a space for his own life through understanding theirs—make for one of the most moving and transformative reading experiences I've had. I won't ever forget it.

Riveting, soulful, and courageously told, Will Boast's memoir is a gorgeous meditation on grief and family and also a deeply personal account of his coming-of-age under a relentless bombardment of tragedies and revelations. Never has a story of loss been so full of life.

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EPILOGUE is a profoundly moving portrait of family and loss, of mystery and grief. The story unfolds and builds and doubles back on itself like the notes and riffs in a jazz performance. Will Boast is a virtuoso, a masterful writer and storyteller.