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Reputation Is Paramount
Gods of Glenhaven follows a middle-aged couple and their teen daughter trying to navigate a failing marriage and broken family dynamic in a talkative small town. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I love suburbia for many reasons. What fascinates me most about it is that it seems like the goal is to eliminate as many of the hardships and vicissitudes of life as possible. In the suburbs, you try to capture and keep the good things, while either ignoring or reframing the bad things you can’t manage to avoid. And reputation is paramount — you don’t want to become known as anything other than an upstanding person who loves their job, their children, and their community.
Do you have a favorite scene in this story? One that was especially enjoyable to craft?
I especially enjoyed writing the scene in the Home Depot, which takes place the morning after the Rites of Initiation at the high school. There are seventy naked people slumbering amidst the lumber and wheelbarrows, and a stunned police sergeant has to sort it all out.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The value of the social contract is the big theme. This is why I needed Gods (who don’t play by the rules) and the potential for humans to have unusual power, which might encourage them to break the terms of the social contract.
Can fans expect to see more releases from you soon? What are you currently working on?
I like to write short comedy pieces — my work has been published in McSweeney’s, Points in Case, Weekly Humorist, and other magazines. I’m doing a lot of that kind of writing while also beginning work on a second novel, entitled Little Dan.
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When Greek gods sweep into the quaint suburban town of Glenhaven to untangle their messy love lives, the helpless mortals don’t stand a chance.
Christian Orr, struggling with work and erectile dysfunction after discovering his wife’s infidelity, has just moved into what his daughter Francesca calls the Divorced Dads Apartment Complex. His high-powered attorney ex, Sloan, is jaded and restless, leaving precocious Francesca caught in the crosscurrents of change.
Enter Dionysus-“Dee”-the god of wine, sex, and questionable decisions, who shows up searching for his estranged wife Ari and their teenage son Maron. After three thousand years of Dee’s antics, Ari has had enough. She’s struck a deal with Zeus to start fresh-as a mortal suburban mom. And what’s more normal than falling for a regular guy like Christian? If only Dee would stop tearing through Glenhaven in his quest to win her back.
Drunk on Dee’s wine, the residents of Glenhaven form chanting covens in the woods, participate in ecstatic rituals, and experience divine revelations-all while Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” loops faintly in the background of their lives.
Gods of Glenhaven is a hilarious, poignant, and confronting novel about the universal fears and follies of the human condition, and the joy and freedom we can experience by letting go.
Gods of Glenhaven
Gods of Glenhaven is a raw, darkly funny, and deeply human story about people falling apart and trying to stitch themselves back together. It follows Christian Orr, a man sliding into middle age with a broken marriage, sexual dysfunction, and a pile of humiliations that somehow keep getting worse. His wife, Sloan, is a driven attorney who mistakes dominance for control until her life unravels, too. Their teenage daughter Francesca floats between them, trying to make sense of the wreckage. Around these three, the town of Glenhaven buzzes with gossip, longing, and absurdity. It’s a small world full of big emotions, where humor and despair share the same seat.
I found Statler’s writing disarmingly sharp. Every line feels alive with awkward truth. He doesn’t flinch from embarrassment or pain, and he writes humiliation with the kind of precision that made me both laugh and squirm. The dialogue is quick and biting, but the silences hit harder. Christian’s spiraling self-awareness feels almost too real at times; I could feel the claustrophobia of his failures and the absurd hope that something, anything, might still redeem him. Sloan, on the other hand, made me furious and fascinated in equal measure. She’s brittle, proud, often terrible, but undeniably human. The novel moves like a tragic comedy that keeps threatening to tip either way.
What really struck me was how the book keeps shifting tones without losing its rhythm. One page had me laughing at Christian’s disastrous attempts at self-improvement, and the next left me staring, a little shaken, at how much loneliness the humor covered up. Statler writes like someone who has seen both the joke and the wound and refuses to pick one. The story feels like real life that’s been turned just slightly toward the absurd, so everything painful also glows with a weird kind of beauty. It’s messy, brave, and very alive.
Gods of Glenhaven is a brutal but compassionate look at failure and forgiveness. I’d recommend it to readers who love flawed people written with empathy. Fans of writers like Richard Russo or Jonathan Franzen will probably feel at home here. If you’ve ever felt lost, humiliated, or ridiculous and still had to get up the next morning, this book might hit uncomfortably close to the truth.
Pages: 378 | ASIN : B0F8KPGH67
LITERARY TITAN 