The Third Brother (2006)
Mike had been a lucky little boy: a summer house, a private school education, and an older brother who had protected him from his parents’ volatile marriage. Now, he is spending the summer working for a magazine in Hong Kong. When his editor sends him to Bangkok to report on drug-tourism, the assignment goes awry, and Mike becomes entangled in a mystery that stretches from East Asia to the ruins of the World Trade Center to his very own home.
“One of the best and most vivid evocations of [September 11] that I’ve read.” —Jay McInerny, The Guardian
“McDonell is forging himself a place as this generation’s champion of angst-riddled youth... A terrific novelist already, McDonell is close to a spot at the table occupied by the likes of Barth, Bellow, Roth and Updike.” —The Providence Journal
“McDonell uses language with elegant, minimalist precision... [He] writes best about the precise dynamics of class, loneliness and spiritual decay. . . he is a keen observer of internecine sparring, even those conflicts subtle enough to leave no scars.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“The pacing . . . is perfect. His descriptions of various things—the cafés on Khao San Road; the desperate yearning of the young for independence, experience, and drugs—are visceral and stirring. Without question, Nick McDonell has other things a writer needs besides a publisher: voice and talent.” —Ariel Levy, New York Magazine