The Californians - by Brian Castleberry (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"The Californians is an absolute pleasure from end to end, a thrilling, century-spanning, wholly American tale of art and money, family and land, treasure and time....A brilliant read for fans of Anthony Doerr, Dana Spiotta, and Don DeLillo." -- Matt Bell, author of Appleseed

For fans of Trust and North Woods, a daring novel that spans 100 years of American history, from the early days of cinema to the rise of NFTs, about parents and children, the drive to create even in times of crisis, and the inheritance of grand western dreams.

It's 2024, and Tobey Harlan--college dropout, temporary waiter, recently dumped--steals from the wall of his father's house three paintings by the venerated and controversial artist Di Stiegl. Tobey's just lost everything he owns to a Northern California wildfire, and if he can sell the paintings (albeit in a shady way to a notorious tech bro) he can start life anew in a place no one will ever find him, perhaps even Oregon.

A hundred years before, Klaus Aaronsohn--German-Jewish immigrant, resident of the Lower East Side--inveigles his way into a film studio in Astoria, Queens. In love with silent cinema, Klaus will restyle himself Klaus von Stiegl, a mysterious aristocratic German film director. In true Hollywood fashion, he will court fame, fortune, romance, and betrayal, and end his career directing Brackett: a radical, notorious 60s-era detective show.

Weaving between Tobey and Klaus is the story of Diane "Di" Stiegl: Klaus's granddaughter, raised in Palm Springs, who claws out a career as an artist in gritty 1980s NYC. As America yields the presidency to a Hollywood cowboy, as Diane's grifter father and free-spirited mother circle in and out of her life, Diane will reflect America's most urgent and hypocritical years back to itself, uneasily finding critical adoration as well as great fame and wealth.

A dazzling novel for readers of Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter and The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, The Californians is an ambitious and sweeping journey across a century. Nuanced and textured, gloriously funny, a critical portrait of the collective American consciousness that has brought us to today, it showcases Brian Castleberry as an inventive, stylish storyteller and a sharp observer of the human condition.

Review Quotes

"An ambitious, widescreen novel about the ugliness that often ensues when art and commerce collide.... Castleberry strives to realistically capture the way money shores up or permeates all sorts of creative endeavors: Hollywood, TV, fine art and more." -- Los Angeles Times

"With its polished sentences and rollicking rhythm, The Californians immerses us in an elaborate plot.... A bold, ambitious book.... An exuberant romp through the art of the American Century." -- Star Tribune

"In The Californians, Castleberry has created a sprawling saga that is both colorful and convincing. It weaves in and out of some of the major fault lines of American history, from the silent film era to McCarthyism and our age of digital disinformation.... The pace, verve and novelty of The Californians create an often dazzling mosaic effect, and the vignette-like chapters mean a new perspective or thread of the story is always just around the corner." -- Sydney Morning Herald

"The Californians is a superb work from the creative mind of Brian Castleberry.... Castleberry thrives at crafting fascinating characters with narratives worth following from start to finish." -- BookReporter.com

"Immersive, expansive, century-spanning, and deeply felt, Brian Castleberry's The Californians takes you on a ride through three generations of artists, capitalists, patsies, dreamers, cheats -- Californians. It's a book that entertains and excites, a story of movies, of yearning, of how and why we make art, of how and why money both propels and traps, seduces and destroys. A story of failures and legacies passed down. A total pleasure of a book." -- Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight

"The Californians is an absolute pleasure from end to end, a thrilling, century-spanning, wholly American tale of art and money, family and land, treasure and time. Few storytellers write with as much stylistic ambition as Brian Castleberry, and with The Californians he wins big off every bold bet he makes. A brilliant read for fans of Anthony Doerr, Dana Spiotta, and Don DeLillo." -- Matt Bell, author of Appleseed

"It's hard to write something totally new, but Brian Castleberry has managed it. The Californians is a story within a story within a story--set across three distinct time periods and featuring an incredible cast of interconnected characters who are all trying to figure out how to make art and money and not let the making of one consume the other. Somehow Castleberry manages the spectacular feat of writing a novel that can be read forwards, backwards and sideways, and the result is a book I'll be thinking about for years to come." -- Rachel Beanland, author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House is on Fire

"The Californians, a sprawling, century-spanning tale that follows a cast of dreamers as they strive to reinvent themselves in the wide-open American west, deserves a spot on the bookshelf of quintessential California novels. It's all here-art, money, Hollywood, fractured families, political rupture, climate catastrophe, ruthless ambition and the relentless threat of failure-delivered in whip-smart prose and daring in its construction. Castleberry has written the kind of novel that immerses you so deeply in a world that you may need to remind yourself where you are after you lift your eyes from the page. A contemporary American classic."
-- Laura Warrell, author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

"A brilliantly crafted novel about chasing meaning in a burning world, the way money both empowers and spoils, and the place of art and the artist in a land of consumption...From Hollywood's early silent films to New York's 1980s downtown art scene and the smoke-filled air of the American West today, Castleberry gives us an invented world fabulously vast in scope. I'm in awe." -- Kelli Jo Ford, author of Crooked Hallelujah

"Demands readers' attention.... Propelled by Castleberry's skillful hand and contemporary voice, The Californians probes at the generations-old grapple between art and wealth in America, interrogating how we strive to make meaning amid perpetual unrest." -- Blackbird Literary Journal

"Exhilarating, profound, and pulsating with humor, The Californians illuminates something quintessentially American--the audacious pursuit of individual freedom, be it creative, moral, or monetary, which, although delusional at times, is enduring and possibly redemptive. This richly textured, nimbly narrated epic is a triumph. It will keep you spellbound." -- Ye Chun, Author of Straw Dogs of the Universe

"Catabolic is the fire that ignites Brian Castleberry's saga of a combustible century seen through the branches of two entangled families held hostage by art, money, ambition, and the individual struggle to be free of the tarnished fortune and misfortune of family legacy and inheritance. Plumbing the guts of the darkly glimmering behemoth that is contemporary America, THE CALIFORNIANS is an immense successor to Nine Shiny Objects, a big American novel that establishes Castleberry as a diagnostician of what went wrong with the American Dream." -- Asako Serizawa, author of Inheritors

"An insightful exploration of the motivation of artists and how their work is essential as visionaries who hold up mirrors to society. The way Castleberry combines his characters' lives, separated by decades, is a marvel." -- Library Journal

"A novel as ambitious, beautiful, and precarious as the Golden State itself." -- Booklist

"Discovering the nature of the characters' associations and intersections across the chapters is one of the richest pleasures of the book. Another pleasure: the detailed portraits of 20th-century American life. Each chapter is a neatly packed and well-researched time capsule, ...the close-clinging omniscient narration nimbly taking on the voices of each decade." -- New York Times Book Review on Nine Shiny Objects

"Marked by literary ambition. ... This is a story about how our individual histories follow us, about light versus dark, but also about our clouded perception of America--and how it continues to divide us." -- Elle on Nine Shiny Objects

"The truly shining objects are the nine stories that make up this gripping, shapeshifting novel. A debut out of this world." -- Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance, on Nine Shiny Objects

"Sharply tuned, funny, satisfyingly strange, and preternaturally poised, unspooling in immaculate prose. Brian Castleberry has that rare, can't-be-taught ability to turn smoothly at any point in any direction, giving each sentence, no matter how casual, a quiet current of electric suspense." -- William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Barbarian Days, on Nine Shiny Objects

"Impressive... Memorable characters inhabit a surprising, engaging story of American idealism and its dark opposite." -- Kirkus Reviews on Nine Shiny Objects