On a Wave

Biography & Memoir, Literary
Cover of the book On a Wave by Thad Ziolkowski, Grove Atlantic
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Author: Thad Ziolkowski ISBN: 9780802198129
Publisher: Grove Atlantic Publication: December 1, 2007
Imprint: Grove Press Language: English
Author: Thad Ziolkowski
ISBN: 9780802198129
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Publication: December 1, 2007
Imprint: Grove Press
Language: English

In this wry and exhilarating coming-of-age story, a prizewinning poet poignantly looks back at his adolescent surfing years.
 
As a disenchanted, unemployed English professor, Thad Ziolkowski decides one day to sneak away from his temp job in Manhattan and catch a wave off a dingy Queens shoreline. In the meager cold waves, he contemplates how he could have possibly become a semidepressed, chain-smoking, aimless man when, for a few shining years of his boyhood, he was invincible. His lapsed love affair with the ocean begins amid the late-sixties counterculture in coastal Florida. After his parents’ divorce, nine-year-old Thad escapes from his difficult family—notably a new brooding and explosive stepfather—by heading for the thrilling, uncharted waters of the local beach. In the embrace of the surf, he is able to stay offshore for years, until his life is upended once again, this time by a double tragedy that deposits him at a crossroads between a life in the waves and a life on land. Lyrical and disarmingly funny, On a Wave is a glorious portrait of youth that reminds readers of Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life and Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time.
 
“A sharp, self-conscious portrait of the artist as a young grommet.” —The New Yorker

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In this wry and exhilarating coming-of-age story, a prizewinning poet poignantly looks back at his adolescent surfing years.
 
As a disenchanted, unemployed English professor, Thad Ziolkowski decides one day to sneak away from his temp job in Manhattan and catch a wave off a dingy Queens shoreline. In the meager cold waves, he contemplates how he could have possibly become a semidepressed, chain-smoking, aimless man when, for a few shining years of his boyhood, he was invincible. His lapsed love affair with the ocean begins amid the late-sixties counterculture in coastal Florida. After his parents’ divorce, nine-year-old Thad escapes from his difficult family—notably a new brooding and explosive stepfather—by heading for the thrilling, uncharted waters of the local beach. In the embrace of the surf, he is able to stay offshore for years, until his life is upended once again, this time by a double tragedy that deposits him at a crossroads between a life in the waves and a life on land. Lyrical and disarmingly funny, On a Wave is a glorious portrait of youth that reminds readers of Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life and Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time.
 
“A sharp, self-conscious portrait of the artist as a young grommet.” —The New Yorker

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