A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK National Book Award-winning author of Mating In a sophisticated romp through the tribulations and joys of marriage and friendship, a group of college friends reunites two decades after graduation.

Rush is the best kind of comic novelist. The New York Times Book Review

After the sudden death of Douglas, once the ringleader of a clique of self-styled wits, his four best friends are summoned to his Catskills estate to mourn his passing. Responding to a mysterious sense of emergency in the call, Ned flies in from San Francisco with his wife Nina in furious pursuit; theyre at a critical point in their attempts to conceive and she wont let a funeral get in the way. It is Nina who gives us a pointed, irreverent commentary as the men reconvene, while Ned tries to understand what it was that made this clutch of souls his friends to begin withbefore time, sex, work, and the brutal quirks of history reshaped them.

Filled with unexpected, funny, telling aperus, Norman Rushs Subtle Bodies is also a deeply moving exploration of the meanings of life.