Halcyon, Elliot Ackerman
Halcyon, Elliot Ackerman
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Halcyon
A novel

Author: Elliot Ackerman

Narrator: Steven Jay Cohen

Unabridged: 8 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/23/2023

Synopsis

A daring new novel, at once timely and timeless, set around an American family and the ever-shifting sands of history and memory and legacy that define them (“An expert juggling act.” —Stephen Markley, New York Times Book Review)

Martin Neumann, recently divorced, is living at Halcyon, the Virginia estate of renowned lawyer, family patriarch, and World War II hero Robert Ableson. It’s 2004, and Gore is entering his second term as president, when news breaks that scientists have discovered a cure for death. Suddenly, Martin is forced to question everything he thought he understood about the world around him. Who is Ableson, really? Why has Martin been drawn into the Ablesons’ most closely guarded family secrets? Is this new science a miraculous good or an insidious evil?

From pivotal elections to crumbling marriages, from the Civil War to the Battle of Saipan, Halcyon is a profound and probing novel that grapples with what history means, who is affected by it, and how the complexities of our shared future rest on the dual foundations of remembering and forgetting.

About The Author

ELLIOT ACKERMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Halcyon, 2034, Red Dress In Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoir The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan, and Places and Names: On War, Revolution and Returning. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and Marine veteran who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. He divides his time between New York City and Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jill on April 16, 2023

Imagine if you were to hear the most earth-shattering news of your life: scientists have conquered death, first in a lab study of Lazarus mice and lately in a control group of about 100 subjects who have, in effect, been resurrected. That premise is at the center of Elliott Ackerman’s audacious new n......more

Goodreads review by Roger on June 14, 2023

In a clever altering of recent history, Ackerman imagines President Gore in the White House in 2004 as a champion of groundbreaking, government-backed science that can “resurrect” humans after their deaths. The narrator of this engaging, though sometimes tepid, drama is Martin Neumann, a history pro......more

Goodreads review by Neill on June 04, 2023

Yesterday afternoon, I settled into my green chair in my office to read Elliot Ackerman’s new novel, “Halcyon”. This is the second of Elliot’s books I’ve read. There is another about his experiences as a Marine officer in Afghanistan that I plan to read next. I admit that I started reading “Halcyon”......more

Goodreads review by Joanne on May 20, 2023

Elliot Ackerman’s new novel Halcyon (Knopf) publishes May 23. Halcyon spirals through history and alternative history, life and death, politics and anarchy until the reader thinks and rethinks what is and is not real and what does and does not have consequence, all the while turning pages to find ou......more

Goodreads review by Alyssa on June 29, 2023

sometimes a book is trying so hard to be A Comment On These Times that i want to float up into the void of space and escape literacy......more

Quotes

“An expert juggling act . . . Idiosyncratic and engrossing throughout.” —Stephen Markley, New York Times Book Review

“Halcyon is an entertaining thought experiment, and Ackerman writes with a gentle, graceful style . . . Ackerman delivers a potent critique of the what-if nature of talking about history . . . Ackerman, as much as any working novelist today, is invested in getting the facts of war and history right.” —Mark Athitakis, Washington Post

“A blend of counterfactual history and futurism and a way to think about some of our thorniest social and cultural issues today.” —Jeffery Gedmin, American Purpose
 
“Frightening, funny, and thought-provoking.” —Mark Braude, The Octavian Report

“Ingenious . . . Elliot Ackerman prefers challenging questions over convenient answers, leaving ample room for readers to engage in leaps of imagination as bold as the ones he’s undertaken . . . Blending alternative history with science fiction, Ackerman artfully explores several provocative issues that have become flash points in contemporary America.” —Bookpage

“Thought-provoking . . . Visionary.” —Publishers Weekly

“A novel of ideas in an age of opinions.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“A thoughtful and fascinating thought experiment, one that explores mortality, fate, and the malleability of historical memory.” —Booklist

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