"This is experimental fiction at its best and most human. With the control of the great postmodernists, Kalich reveals how books form a life, and how, as a life comes to its end, both the books and the life itself become whittled down to what is glowingly essential." - Brian Evenson, Novelist and Critic

"A major American writer." - Carlin Romano, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Kalich might have written the last postmodern novel; or maybe the last novel: period." - Brian McHale, Literary Theorist

Combining fiction and autobiography, the aging writer Richard Kalich describes an unexpected dilemma: he will only be allowed to bring 100 favorite books of the 10,000 or more that crowd his New York City apartment when he moves into an Assisted Living Facility.

Kalich starts to pare down his books with an obsessive urgency that becomes a reexamination of the writing life. And, after taking into his apartment a catatonic homeless woman and her young son in order to write his novel Mother Love, he realizes how wrong he has been. Art is one thing, life is another, and he has only lived "half-a-life." Calling forth his archetypal villain Haberman from an earlier novel, The Nihilesthete, the Author teams up with his Character to explore Kalich's lifelong inner conflict and the possibility of changing his nature, of transcending the Mind/Body Split.

Richard Kalich is an internationally acclaimed novelist whose other books include The Zoo, Charlie P, and Penthouse F. He has been a Finalist for the National Book Award and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His works have been translated into 14 languages.