n At Home with the Glynns, Peter Leroy again sets off down memory lane through his boyhood in Babbington, Long Island. This time Peter tells of his relationship with the remarkable Glynn family: Andy the artist; Rosetta, his wife, a poet; and the enchanting “twins,” Margot and Martha, who entice young Peter into their bed one moonlit evening . . . and many evenings following. As is usual with Peter's recollections, we are never certain where memory ends and imagination begins—but we are certain that we are reading the work of a brilliant storyteller who combines wry humor, nostalgia, satire, and dazzling invention.

Devolves into a perfect madeleine . . . leaving an insatiable desire for more.
Kirkus Reviews
Anyone who has mourned, or yearned for, his or her younger self will find Kraft an enchantment.
Publishers Weekly
Kraft is a master of dialogue and description.
Town and Country
A splendidly vivid exploration of “sexual pleasure amplified and augmented by the thrill of adventure.”
Dwight Garner, New York Newsday
Nostalgic and very funny and just a little perverse.
Frederic Koeppel, Memphis Commercial Appeal
Ingenuous, modest, wholly engaging . . . a daring tour de force.
Jonathan Baumbach, The New York Times Book Review
Celebrates the savor of memory for the sophisticated palate.
Boston Sunday Globe
Postmodernism was never so pleasurable.
Malcolm Jones, Jr., Newsweek
One of the more hilariously erotic pieces of writing since Lolita.
Edward Hannibal, The East Hampton Star

At Home with the Glynns is published in paperback by Picador, a division of St. Martin's Press, at $11.00. 

You should be able to find At Home with the Glynns at your local bookstore, but you can also order it by phone from: 

Bookbound at 1-800-959-7323 
Book Call at 1-800-255-2665 (worldwide 1-203-966-5470) 

This gently provocative novel uses a boy’s delicious dalliance with two sisters to serve up the author’s true passion: Deep Questions about the nature of art and memory. . . . The plot, such as it is, pits Kraft/Leroy’s digressive tendencies against the reader’s fond hopes that the book will live up to the promise of its early sexual-initiation scene, a model of the genre. A key digression is Andy’s search for classical visual archetypes—e. g., the “pure” watermelon—a quest that captures Peter’s imagination shortly after he consummates his relationship with the twins. The fact that the Glynns are Middle European exiles hiding under assumed names, that the twins’ “foreplay” consists of having Peter act out the plots of the foreign films that they see at the local art house, and that Peter’s involvement with the girls will eventually resemble the plots of the movies he sees—well, that's the kind of High Fun to be found in Kraft’s self-referential but never boring Art. . . . Kraft’s latest sexy-sweet novel devolves into a perfect madeleine—dissolving just as you bite into it, leaving an insatiable desire for more. 
   Kirkus Reviews

Peter Leroy, hotel owner in the town of Babbington, Long Island (“clam capital of America”) offers further marvelously appealing recollections of his boyhood misadventures of the mid-1950s. Readers unfamiliar with the earlier Leroy novels (What a Piece of Work I Am, etc.) will find Kraft’s wry style, deep insights into youth and age, and sly observation of adult behavior a rare delight. Peter’s life at ages 11 and 12 revolves around his slightly bohemian neighbors -- abstract painter Andy Glynn, his talkative wife Rosetta, a melancholy poet and compulsive entrant of product-promotion giveaway contests, and their forward, mischievous 13-year-old daughters, Margot and Martha. Peter’s relationship with the Glynn sisters proceeds from dates spent watching arty European films to secret nighttime rendezvous in which he climbs the Glynns’ stone wall and slips undressed into “the twins”’ bed for relatively uneventful trysts that inflame his prepubescent fantasies. Anyone who has mourned, or yearned for, his or her younger self will find Kraft an enchantment.
   Publishers Weekly (starred review)

While ostensibly the tale of a love affair young Peter has with the Glynns’ slightly older twin daughters, the book is an exploration of time, memory, truth, and trust, and Kraft is a master of dialogue and description. 
   Town and Country

The book contains many wonderfully evocative scenes of the romantic threesome at large—going to the movies, wandering home in a hormonal daze and finally clambering into bed. On nearly every page there is splendid writing about the quirks of adolescence . . . a splendidly vivid exploration of “sexual pleasure amplified and augmented by the thrill of adventure”—a striding tour through a young boy's mind as he enters what he calls “that enchanted Glynnscape.” 
   Dwight Garner, New York Newsday

Nostalgic and very funny and just a little perverse. . . . Kraft manages, as always, to pass his serious concerns off with the delicate evanescence of a bubble blown from a ring. 
   Frederic Koeppel, Memphis Commercial Appeal

In this latest episode of the “personal history, adventures, experiences, and observations” of 12-year-old Peter Leroy—his adventures in the growing-up trade—the precocity of Mr. Kraft’s narrator mirrors the audacity of the novel itself. . . . Through a string of digressions, the storyteller withholds the erotic main event he promises us in his preface. . . . These digressions, which seem arbitrary at first, twist together like weave in a fabric. . . . Peter Leroy’s preadolescent voice, recaptured years later by his fictive middle-aged persona, is always unerringly itself, at once unexpectedly articulate and believably childlike. It is a likable voice, ingenuous, modest, wholly engaging. As such, it earns the most fanciful events in his story a certain credibility, or at least an unresisting suspension of disbelief. We are disposed to accept whatever Mr. Kraft, in the guise of Peter Leroy, tells us, even as he confesses to mixing invention with memory, even as events become more and more whimsically improbable. A daring tour de force, At Home with the Glynns seems often to be dangling on a tightrope over the mine field of terminal cute. It teeters teasingly but never loses its poise. Mr. Kraft’s cunning novel is really a children’s book (like, say, The Catcher in the Rye) for adults, which I mean as unequivocal praise. There is nothing more serious, after all, than the playful, given full play. 
   Jonathan Baumbach, The New York Times Book Review

The comedy of At Home with the Glynns comes equally from the boyhood tale, which cheerfully flouts all the literary laws of childhood innocence, and from the adult narrative voice in which it is slyly recounted. With self-mocking finesse, the novel celebrates the savor of memory for the sophisticated palate. 
   Boston Sunday Globe

“My art is made of recollection, and revision, and wishful thinking,” Peter admits. This is more a boast than a confession, since, as ringmaster of Peter’s ever-expanding universe, Kraft has continually scrubbed away the distinction between life and literature. Or, as Peter once put it, “I have now a fond affection for the idea that all the characters in books live in the same place,” a well-populated town where “I sometimes walk along a shady street on a summer morning and pause to watch the talking squirrels gather nuts in Emma Bovary’s front yard while Tom Sawyer paints her fence.” That sounds suspiciously post-modernist, but postmodernism was never so pleasurable. Charming but never sappy, droll but never cynical, Peter Leroy’s adventures constitute one of our wittiest and most acute portraits of America at mid-century. In the bargain they are the literary equivalent of Fred Astaire dancing: great art that looks like fun. 
   Malcolm Jones, Jr., Newsweek

Mr. Kraft craftily sets us up with a prose poem upon the digital manipulation of a pea . . . that is one of the more hilariously erotic pieces of writing since Lolita . . . . Peter-and-the-pea alone would keep you reading even if the Glynn twins and their artiste immigrant parents didn’t turn out to be as lovable as they do. . . . If At Home with the Glynns happens to be your first taste of the world according to Leroy, know that . . . you’re not just reading an immensely enjoyable little book, you may be acquiring an addiction from which there is no recovery. 
   Edward Hannibal, The East Hampton Star

Scratching your head trying to think of a way to support this work?
You'll find some swell ideas from Eric Kraft's scrumptious publicist, Candi Lee Manning,here.

Do you have your copy?

You should be able to find At Home with the Glynns at your local bookstore, but you can also order it by phone from: 

Bookbound at 1-800-959-7323 
Book Call at 1-800-255-2665 (worldwide 1-203-966-5470) 

At Home with the Glynns is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group. 

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.