Up In The Air

Description

Ryan Bingham's job as a Career Transition Counselor (he fires people) has kept him airborne for years. He hates his job, but he loves 'Airworld', finding happiness in pressurized cabins and anonymous hotel rooms, and pursuing a noble ultimate goal: one million frequent flier miles. With sharp wit, and wisdom, Up in the Air combines brilliant social observation with an acute sense of the modern mind. It is a story for unsettled times.

Reviews

'Kirn is such a sharp writer he gives your brain paper cuts ... This is a book that will endure' -- Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book Review 'Up in the Air deliciously lambastes corporate America. Mr Kirn's satire ranges deftly over our contemporary business landscape' -- The Wall Street Journal 'Clever, lacerating ... Smartly acerbic ... Archly devastating post-social satire' -- The New York Times 'Kirn is a virtuoso observer of Americana ... Terrifically funny and poignant ... Beneath its glittering, comic surface, his novel asks if, in pursuing what we think we want, we might lose ourselves completely' -- Minneapolis Star Tribune 'Bitterly funny, minutely observed and deeply cynical ... A virtuoso feat' -- Newsday

Author description

Walter Kirn has written a collection of short stories, My Hard Bargain, and several novels, including Thumbsucker (made into a film in 2005, starring Keanu Reeves and Vince Vaughn), Mission to America, and The Unbinding, and internet-only novel. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Vogue and Esquire and has served as an American cultural correspondent for the BBC. He was the 2008-9 Vare Non-fiction Writer in Residence at the University of Chicago.