Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Books for a Better Life Award, and one of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2012, this masterpiece by the National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon features stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children, but also find profound meaning in doing so--"a brave, beautiful book that will expand your humanity" (People).

Solomon's startling proposition in Far from the Tree is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition--that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, and Solomon documents triumphs of love over prejudice in every chapter.

All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent should parents accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Drawing on ten years of research and interviews with more than three hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges.

Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original and compassionate thinker, Far from the Tree explores how people who love each other must struggle to accept each other--a theme in every family's life.

Author: Andrew Solomon
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 11/13/2012
Pages: 976
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 3.00lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.50w x 2.10d
ISBN: 9780743236713

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 8.3
Point Value: 22
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 192973 / Far from the Tree: Young Adult Edition: How Children and Their Parents Learn to Accept One Another..


Award: Books for a Better Life - Winner
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Winner
Award: Lambda Literary Awards - Finalist
Award: Dayton Literary Peace Prize - Winner
Award: Lukas Prize Project - Winner


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 06/15/2012 pg. 52
Kirkus Reviews Fall Preview 08/15/2012 pg. 30
Publishers Weekly 09/17/2012
People Weekly 10/01/2012 pg. 46
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2012
Booklist 10/01/2012 pg. 6
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/05/2012 pg. 34
New Yorker (The) 11/19/2012 pg. 85
People Weekly 11/26/2012 pg. 59
New York Times Book Review 11/25/2012 pg. 1
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/02/2012 pg. 26
New York Times Book Review 12/02/2012 pg. 70
Kirkus Best Nonfiction 12/01/2012 pg. 36
New York Review of Books 02/07/2013 pg. 8
Choice 06/01/2013

About the Author
Andrew Solomon is a professor of psychology at Columbia University, president of PEN American Center, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, NPR, and The New York Times Magazine. A lecturer and activist, he is the author of Far and Away: Essays from the Brink of Change: Seven Continents, Twenty-Five Years; the National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, which has won thirty additional national awards; and The Noonday Demon; An Atlas of Depression, which won the 2001 National Book Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and has been published in twenty-four languages. He has also written a novel, A Stone Boat, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award and The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost. His TED talks have been viewed over ten million times. He lives in New York and London and is a dual national. For more information, visit the author's website at AndrewSolomon.com.


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