In the past year the narrator of 1004 has enjoyed unexpected literary success been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition & been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child Now in a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms & political unrest he must reckon with his biological mortality the possibility of a literary afterlife & the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water In prose that Jonathan Franzen has called 'hilariouscracklingly intelligentand original in every sentence' Lerner's new novel charts an exhilarating course through the contemporary landscape of sex friendship memory art & politics & captures what it is like to be alive right now