The Land of Steady Habits, Ted Thompson
The Land of Steady Habits, Ted Thompson
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The Land of Steady Habits
A Novel

Author: Ted Thompson

Narrator: Joe Barrett

Unabridged: 7 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/25/2014

Synopsis

Ted Thompson's shrewdly funny and finely observed novel about a man who must reckon with the high cost of the good life. A major motion picture streaming on Netflix, directed by Nicole Holofcener, and starring Ben Mendelsohn, Edie Falco, and Connie Britton.

For Anders Hill, long ensconced in the affluent, insular villages of suburban Connecticut that some call "the land of steady habits," it's finally time to reap the rewards of his sensibly-lived life. Newly retired after decades of doing everything right, Anders finds that the contentment he's been promised is still just out of reach. So he decides he's had enough of stability: he leaves his wife, buys a condo, and waits for freedom to transform him.

But as the cheery charade of Christmas approaches, Anders starts to wonder if parachuting out of his old life was the most prudent choice. Stripped of the comforts of his previous identity, Anders turns up at a holiday party full of his ex-wife's friends and is surprised to find that the very world he rejected may be the one he needs the most. Thus Anders embarks on a clumsy, hilarious, and heartbreaking journey to reconcile his past with his present.

Reminiscent of the early work of Updike and Cheever, Ted Thompson writes with a striking compassion for his characters and fresh insight into the American tradition of the suburban narrative.

About Ted Thompson

Ted Thompson is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship. His work has appeared in Tin House and Best New American Voices, among other places. He was born in Connecticut and now lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Barbara on May 17, 2014

4.5 stars: The Land of Steady Habits is a hilarious look at male late-middle-age crisis. Ted Thompson is being touted as “the new and improved” John Updike, with which I concur. The cantankerous main character, Anders Hill, has reached his 60’s and no longer wants to tolerate, what he views as, his......more

Goodreads review by switterbug (Betsey) on April 02, 2014

The negating emptiness of a man’s late middle age is examined alongside of the encroaching isolation of America’s late-stage capitalism. Ted Thompson’s debut novel is reminiscent of Cheever and Updike, rightly so, and his narrative, to me, was warmer and less self-conscious than Updike. Most of the......more

Goodreads review by Carol on July 02, 2015

Exact transparent prose creates a voice that pulled me in from the first page. The main character, Anders Hill, is a newly retired sixty-something year old man. In spite of living a responsible life of "steady habits," providing for his family and building a successful career, he finds himself unful......more

Goodreads review by Brooke on December 31, 2014

I have grown so tired of books about ne'er-do-well men and the wives and mothers who love them anyway. Not a likable character in the book!......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on August 02, 2022

It was a great book in a lot of ways: the characters were good, the story and plot worked well, the writing was nice. A family drama that felt a little bit new and for our generation.......more

Quotes

Selected as a Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers pick of 2014

An Amazon Best Book of 2014

"Filled with heartache and humor, this assured, compassionate first novel channels the suburban angst of Updike and Cheever, updating the narrative of midlife dissatisfaction with a scathing dissection of America's imploding economy...with pitch-perfect prose and endearingly melancholy characters, Thompson offers up a heartbreaking vision of an ailing family and country." --STARRED Booklist

"With impeccable prose, dry wit, and uncommon wisdom, Ted Thompson brings to life one family's painful disappointments and powerful resilience. The Land of Steady Habits combines Austen's shrewd mastery of domestic economics with Updike's compassion for the melancholy commuter to make something elegant, fresh, and brilliant."—Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements

"In his beautiful and generously imagined debut, Ted Thompson will rightly draw comparisons to other chroniclers of suburban life -Updike, Cheever-but I think we need to dig deeper into the tradition-to John O'Hara-because The Land of Steady Habits is our Appointment in Samarra and Anders Hill is our Julian English. Whether it's a society built on coal or one collapsing under the weight of credit default swaps, both novels explore what ails America by looking into the wrecked hearts of those who seem to have everything and now must reckon the high cost of the good life. Over the course of a single holiday season, Thompson takes Anders on a tragicomic ride, through exile and redemption, until a new kind of hero emerges, human and fallible, a man who becomes more for having accepted less and finds greatness because he chooses decency. Fearless and tremendously moving , The Land of Steady Habits tells a story we need to hear and announces the arrival of a voice we should all welcome."—Charles D'Ambrosio, author of The Point and The Dead Fish Museum

"It would probably never occur to New England white people that they are an ethnicity, but this sharp and funny saga of a Connecticut family unraveling is a detailed natural history of upper crust suburbanites and how they live (and drink). The reader learns not to take good fortune and loved ones for granted--and also that a liquor store owner in Westport will never starve."—Sarah Vowell, author of Unfamiliar Fishes and Assassination Vacation

"Ted Thompson will be weighed against some famous Johns -- Updike and Cheever -- for the usual wrong reasons. (Suburbs, separation.) But the comparison is apt in all the ways that matter: because the prose is sumptuous, the characterizations economically brilliant, the themes still important and universal. Because this is a great book. And readers who sample its riches will be greedy to scoop up the entire treasure of it. And so, ladies and gentlemen, we may have found our generation's Rabbit, Run."—Darin Strauss, author of Half Life and More Than It Hurts You

"A book that is funny, shrewd, and heartbreaking by turns, The Land of Steady Habits concerns the lost-and-found souls of Connecticut and Manhattan, and at every point this novel offers both pleasure and insight into its cast of characters. You don't expect a first novel to be as inward and worldly as this one is, and at the same time to be so readable. Ted Thompson's dialogue is so good, so unerring, that he must have perfect pitch. A wonderful debut."—Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love

"Thompson's sharp-eyed debut is that kind of searing portrait of American wealth unraveling that is both dazzling and immeasurably sad." -Kirkus Reviews

"Ted Thompson's elegiac yet bighearted take on adult disillusionment earns its comparisons to suburbans bards such as Updike and Cheever."—The Wall Street Journal Magazine

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