July 3 - July 10, 2009

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Product Description

From the author of The Tattoo Artist (“Beautifully written”—Alice Sebold; “Boldly conceived”—The New York Times Book Review), a new novel—taut, moving, accomplished—set in a fraught, post-9/11 New York... about real estate, dog love, and a city on alert.

A gasoline tanker truck is “stuck” in the Midtown Tunnel. New Yorkers are panicked . . . . Is this the next big attack?

Alex, an artist, and Ruth, a former schoolteacher with an FBI file as thick as a dictionary, must get their beloved dachshund, whose back legs have suddenly become paralyzed, to the animal hospital sixty blocks north. But the streets of Manhattan are welded with traffic. Their dog, Dorothy, twelve-years-old and gray-faced, is the emotional center of Alex and Ruth's forty-five-year-long childless marriage. Using a cutting board as a stretcher, they ferry the dog uptown.

This is also the weekend that Alex and Ruth must sell their apartment. While house hunters traipse
through it during their open house, husband and wife wait by the phone to hear from the animal hospital. During the course of forty-eight hours, as the missing truck driver terrorizes the city, the price of their apartment becomes a barometer for collective hope and despair, as the real estate market spikes and troughs with every breaking news story.

In shifting points of view—Alex’s, Ruth’s, and the little dog’s—man, woman, and one small tenacious
beast try to make sense of the cacophony of rumors, opinions, and innuendos coming from news
anchors, cable TV pundits, pollsters, bomb experts, hostages, witnesses, real estate agents, house hunters, bargain seekers, howling dogs, veterinarians, nurses, and cab drivers.

A moving, deftly told novel of ultrahigh-urban anxiety.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41661 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-30
• Released on: 2009-06-30
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780375425226
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Ciment's spare and surprisingly gripping novel details one long weekend in the life of Ruth and Alex Cohen, an elderly New York couple hoping to sell their East Village apartment of 45 years. Ruth is a retired teacher and Chekhov devotee, and Alex is an artist, currently adding colorful illuminations to the couples' old FBI files. As they ready for an open house, a gas tanker truck gets stuck in the Midtown tunnel, seizing the city with gridlock and fear of a terrorist attack. (In scenes that border on parody, the local news adopts a Danger in the Tunnel graphic and runs viewer polls about whether terrorists take drugs.) Meanwhile, the Cohens' beloved dachshund, Dorothy, falls ill and has to be taken to an uptown animal hospital. As the real estate market swings in response to the news about the tanker, the Cohens wait for news about their dog and confront the reality of leaving their home. Ciment plays the veterinary, real estate and domestic details like elements of a thriller plot, while the couple's love of their dog provides heartrending texture—literature with commercial crossover. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“A brave, generous, nearly perfect novel. . .”

–Los Angeles Times

“A testament to Ciment’s lauded writing style. . . Heroic Measures will delight eager fans awaiting Ciment’s next work.”

–The Daily Beast

“It all sounds so ordinary–dogs get sick; people want to move–yet in Ms. Ciment’s delicate hands, these characters become heroic in their small ways.”

–Wall Street Journal (one of WSJ’s summer reading picks)

“A wry, gentle gem of a novel. . . a lovely read.”

–Christian Science Monitor

"Read Jill Ciment’s Heroic Measures for its painterly depictions of a rattled city, its deliciously biting satire of media and real estate madness, its tender knowledge of the creaturely ties that bind."
—O Magazine

“Gripping. . . Ciment plays the veterinary, real estate and domestic details like elements of a thriller plot, while the couple’s love for their dog provides heartrending texture—literature with a commercial cross over.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)

Praise for Jill Ciment's THE TATTOO ARTIST

“The Tattoo Artist was a fever dream from which I did not wish to wake. This is a beautifully written novel. Ciment transported me to another world where both art and dignity matter. Fantastic!”
–Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

“Ciment’s new novel, like her previous books, is beautifully written and reaches even beyond them as a stunning work of the imagination. I read The Tattoo Artist on one long plane ride, totally immersed and fascinated.”
–Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

“Elegant, powerful and, ultimately, ...

Review
“A brave, generous, nearly perfect novel. . .”

–Los Angeles Times

“A testament to Ciment’s lauded writing style. . . Heroic Measures will delight eager fans awaiting Ciment’s next work.”

–The Daily Beast

“It all sounds so ordinary–dogs get sick; people want to move–yet in Ms. Ciment’s delicate hands, these characters become heroic in their small ways.”

–Wall Street Journal (one of WSJ’s summer reading picks)

“A wry, gentle gem of a novel. . . a lovely read.”

–Christian Science Monitor

"Read Jill Ciment’s Heroic Measures for its painterly depictions of a rattled city, its deliciously biting satire of media and real estate madness, its tender knowledge of the creaturely ties that bind."
—O Magazine

“Gripping. . . Ciment plays the veterinary, real estate and domestic details like elements of a thriller plot, while the couple’s love for their dog provides heartrending texture—literature with a commercial cross over.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)

Praise for Jill Ciment's THE TATTOO ARTIST

“The Tattoo Artist was a fever dream from which I did not wish to wake. This is a beautifully written novel. Ciment transported me to another world where both art and dignity matter. Fantastic!”
–Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

“Ciment’s new novel, like her previous books, is beautifully written and reaches even beyond them as a stunning work of the imagination. I read The Tattoo Artist on one long plane ride, totally immersed and fascinated.”
–Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

“Elegant, powerful and, ultimately, tragic… Stunning.”
–Newsday

“A highly original suspense novel… A heart-seizing narrative…Breathtaking–not a word is out of place.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“An ingenious and provocative image… Rich and strange.”
–Los Angeles Times

“Eerily beautiful.”
–O, The Oprah Magazine

“Start to finish, The Tattoo Artist is rich in Ciment’s trademark wit, intelligence, and gorgeous prose. I shall not soon forget this story.”
–Lynn Freed, author of The Curse of the Appropriate Man

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Customer Reviews

Guaranteed to make you smile...
Are you a dog lover? Read this book.

It is the story of an elderly couple in New York City. Alex and Ruth have been married for 45 years. He's a painter with studio in their apartment. She's a retired schoolteacher. They bought their apartment forty years ago for 5 thousand dollars. They are growing weary of walking up the five flights of stairs. A realtor thinks they can sell their place for a million dollars. That is ONE MILLION bucks.

They are so excited and nervous as they prepare for an open house to show their place to buyers that they fail to notice that the center of their universe, a 12-year-old dachshund named Dorothy is in some pain and distress. When they do realize that Dorothy is hurt they scramble to take her in for medical care. This childless couple will do anything for that little dog. She returns their love and trusts them completely to care for her.

This is the story of that weekend. It's a touching and tender story about the love that bonds we humans and our beloved animal friends.

Touching stuff to make you feel good about life and about those hounds that add so much to our lives. Enjoy!
Woof!

Loved This Book!
I absolutely adored this book. Finished it a week ago and STILL cannot get it out of my thoughts.
Are you a lover of dogs? Read this book!
Are you a lover of great writers? Read this book!
Just read this book...you won't be sorry!
Wonderful author..first time reading a book of hers...am on the way to reading all she has written.

super look at an edgy America
For forty-five years retired teacher Ruth and artist Alex Cohen have lived in their East Village co-op, but now the elderly couple finds the five flights unbearable and their cherished Dorothy the Dachshund can no longer move her back feet making it that much more difficult for them. Thus they plan to sell the apartment hoping for a million dollars and find a more convenient abode somewhere closer to the ocean perhaps as far south as the Carolinas.

As they wait to host an open house, Alex has been adding illustrations to "ancient history FBI files of Ruth. However, the police begin an evacuation when a driver Abdul Pamir loses control of a gas tanker blocking the Midtown tunnel. Residents begin panicking that another 9/11 is happening and the media adds to the fears with the "Danger in the Tunnel" reporting that imply terrorists since the driver is named Abdul. While all this is going down (should say "up"-town) Dorothy becomes ill and needs to see a veterinarian and their realtor says terrorists like Abdul who became frightened of mobs, police, and reporters assaulting him takes hostages, which makes the Cohen pad worth a lot less.

HEROIC MEASURES is a super look at an edgy America in which the media and the politicians play up the 9/11 card at any time, which leads to more nervousness as if the country has turned into a collective neurotic perhaps even psychotic mess. The story line reads like a Manhattan thriller in which any moment the Midtown Tunnel will explode and Abdul will kill his hostages yet does so with a profound focus on the three subplots of New York real estate, an aging couple struggling with an ailing canine, and the media-politician marriage of convenience to hyperbolize the truth. Jill Ciment has written a great "domestic" thriller.

Harriet Klausner