"My obsession is not with breaking records," Church clarifies, but with people who set out to break them—specifically the ones in the tattered edition of the Guinness Book of World Records
Church bought at a book fair when he was a kid. Imaginative meditations on the unseen lives of the man with fingernails so long they curve in on themselves or the overweight twins who worked as motorcycle stuntmen are woven around an account of Church's own life, starting with an accident-prone childhood that left him with a dozen scars down one side of his body, including a 16-stitcher on his cheek that still draws wary looks nearly 20 years later. The theme of alienation emerges as Church considers his reactions to his younger brother's death in a car accident; expressing his rage with a violent, aggressive style of playing basketball eventually gives way to finding an emotional outlet in creative writing. Church examines many powerful memories—of his father speeding through a cornfield to gather ears of corn in the bed of a pickup truck, or of the author himself blowing off an important interview to watch a basketball game with a professor's 10-year-old son—that mark him as a rigorously observant and emotionally perceptive writer likely to stay on readers' radar. Agent, Doug Stewart at Sterling Lord Literistic. (Apr.)
