The sophomore novel from acclaimed writer and translator Adrian Nathan West, Aerostasis is a tale of the persistence and decay of love across three generations of an American family as the matriarch, Joan, is struck by rapid-onset dementia two years after her husband's death. Her daughter, Lisette, an adjunct philosophy professor, leaves her work and her home to care for her mother, detailing in her journal the disintegration of the woman who raised her and learning family secrets. Lisette's boyfriend, Henry, a mental health technician at a hospital for troubled young men, struggles with despair at the futility of his work and tries to reconcile with his impoverished roots in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, while her brother, a beverage manager at a tony suburban country club, drowns in debt and attempts to ignore his wife's infidelities as he bonds with his precocious, rebellious son over a project to restore an antique hot air balloon. A work of vision and piercing lyricism, Aerostasis confirms once again why Joshua Cohen has called West 'one of our best novelists' and Lauren Oyler affirmed, 'West captures the bizarre vividness of America better than anyone I ve ever read.'
