The Whole of the Moon

by Brian Rogers

The Whole of the Moon consists of six crisscrossing narratives set along the old Route 66, from the Inland Empire to the terminus just off Sunset Boulevard. The stories span the years from the late 1950s to the present, and the characters are bound by a fact unknown to they have each checked out the same public library copy of The Great Gatsby .
 
An actor sits poolside waiting to hear whether he has been cast in a television pilot. Two kids ditch school in 1964 and go for a hike in the woods that turns dangerous. A woman named Dot remembers her husband who spent years working on a musical adaptation of The Great Gatsby . A young woman Felicity deals with the consequences of an unexpected pregnancy. Mike, a former high school star, attends an open tryout for the California Angels baseball team. And a boarding school teacher tells the story of his cousin, a social climber who has disappeared in the wake of a murder. These are the characters that populate The Whole of the Moon.  Brian Rogers’ novel is about determination and failure and life in Southern California away from the red carpet.

Genres: Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published September 20, 2017

About the author

California native Brian Rogers attended the University of the Pacific and the graduate writing program at San Francisco State University. A former stand-up comedian, he was awarded the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society prize for Best Novel-in-Progress, served as the George Bennett Fellow (Writer-in-Residence) at Phillips Exeter Academy, and has been a finalist for other awards including the Bakeless Prize in Fiction from Bread Loaf and the Best Teleplay prize from the Austin Film Festival. His short play, Come Back, Burt Lancaster, has been featured in a variety of festivals and showcases, and he is the author of Inhabitants of the Earth, a chapbook of flash fiction. Brian has taught at many colleges and high schools over the years, and presently lives in Orange County, California.

Reviews

[Marisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the type of book that I could have kept reading for forever. I think a lot of fiction that tries to bounce between characters and different storylines makes it too difficult to keep up, but The Whole of the Moon did it beautifully. Most of the stories never end up intersecting beyond the library book connection, but each is captivating and pulls at your heart in its own way. The prose was beautiful, too, but it didn't overwhelm the stories or hinder the pace. Again, I think that's a tough balance to achieve.
I'll be recommending this read to everyone in my life, honestly. It's a sweet, quiet novel, making the experience almost intimate. Leaves you thinking, and requires a heavy sigh and a nap after finishing it.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant Concept Inspired by Great Gatsby...Not only is The Whole of the Moon a genius concept for a book; the author’s well-crafted prose kept me turning page after page to learn what happened to each character through this beautifully-developed string of narratives, all California-centric, all relating back in their own thematic way to The Great Gatsby. I am often not fulfilled with modern fiction, always wishing for more. Not the case with this book. This is narrative fiction at its finest; it is boldly entertaining. It is a work of genius. Cannot wait for more captivating works from this brilliant writer.


Brian Rogers

[Cynthia Muchnick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully and subtly written. I couldn't put this book down. The Whole of the Moon explores multiple characters through many vignettes pulled from their distinct Southern California lives; often these charters are expressed with a stream-of-consciousness feel and voice over many years of their lives. The story lines are delicately and expertly woven and sometimes intersect briefly at small, quiet moments. Beautifully and subtly written, these lives sometimes intersect in interesting ways, and the characters have honest voices. The characters evolve, grow, observe, react and work their way under a reader's skin . . . and moments of darkness, failure, and fear also emerge, sometimes at surprising moments. This quiet and well crafted novel is truly special.

[Rita Ciresi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the premise of this intriguing work by debut author Brian Rogers, who takes us to southern California and gives us a glimpse inside the sometimes desperate lives of half a dozen characters who, at first, seem to have nothing to do with one another. It surfaces that each has checked out the same library copy of The Great Gatsby. Anyone with an interest in the linked short story collection/novel in stories genres will want to pick up this book and see how Rogers deftly stacks the stories one upon the other. Each reader will have a favorite; mine was the tale of The Actor waiting for a callback (how Fitzgerald-like is that?).

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an imaginative quilt of stories gently coming together in the final chapters. Titled after the Waterboys song (which I later learned was a Prince tribute?), each character has a story of youth and ambition and either loss of dreams or changing expectations with character growth. Its like a well written reunion where you wonder what ever happened to so and so.... in this book you find out. Locking the California origin stories together is the book The Great Gatsby, also a social history of a different time. The Great Gatsby book has a minor or major part of each persons story as each character at some point in time takes it out of the library.

A likeable book.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed every page of this book. I didn't want to stop reading it. The six different stories are interwoven around the same library book, the characters are all great and the story's of these people are very interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone. I won my book from Goodreads Giveaways.

[Leighanne Medina · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fun book!!! I especially loved Felicity's story and The Hikers!!!