For fans of Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen, Lorrie Moore and Curtis Sittenfeld, AMONG THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS is a dazzling first novel, a portrait of an American family on the cusp of irrevocable change, and a startlingly original story of love and time lost.

Jack Shanley is a well-known New York artist, charming and vain, who doesn’t mean to plunge his family into crisis. His wife, Deb, gladly left behind a difficult career as a dancer to raise the two children she adores. In the ensuing years, she has mostly avoided coming face-to-face with the weaknesses of the man she married. But then an anonymously sent package arrives in the mail: a cardboard box containing sheaves of printed emails chronicling Jack’s secret life. The package is addressed to Deb, but it’s delivered into the wrong hands: her children’s.
 
With this vertiginous opening begins a debut that is by turns funny, wise and indescribably moving. As the Shanleys spin apart into separate orbits, leaving New York in an attempt to regain their bearings, 15-year-old Simon feels the allure of adult freedoms for the first time, while 11-year-old Kay wanders precariously into a grown-up world she can’t possibly understand. Writing with extraordinary precision, humor and beauty, Julia Pierpont has crafted a timeless, hugely enjoyable novel about the bonds of family life --- their brittleness, and their resilience.