Synopses & Reviews
Thomas Mallon's acclaimed novel vividly tells the story of a day in May-May 24, 1962. While Scott Carpenter orbits the earth in his Aurora 7 capsule, the lives of a host of characters seem interwoven on the ground below: everyone from a convicted child killer to a famous novelist, a New York cabdriver, a sexually conflicted priest, and a British housewife about to give birth to a thalidomide-stricken baby.
Aurora 7 is above all the story of Gregory Noonan, a spooky suburban fifth-grader obsessed with the space program. The fate of Gregory and his family will prove mysteriously linked to the astronaut's when the boy flees school to watch the perilous climax of Carpenter's mission on the giant TV monitors in Grand Central Terminal. As John Updike observed, Mallon's novel-featuring cameos by Walter Cronkite, John F. Kennedy, and Lee Harvey Oswald-"hones a multitude of details to a gleaming, smoothly oiled fit . . . and catches dozens of characters in its shimmering web."
About the Author
Thomas Mallon's books include the novels
Henry and Clara,
Two Moons,
Dewey Defeats Truman, and
Aurora 7; a collection of essays,
In Fact; and his book on the assassination of JFK,
Mrs. Paine's Garage. His work has appeared in
The New Yorker,
The New York Times Magazine,
The American Scholar, and
GQ. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for reviewing in 1998. The recipient of a 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Westport, Connecticut.