EXULT REVIEWS

From Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner (Riverhead Books, 2003) and A Thousand Splendid Suns (Riverhead Books, 2006):

“There is gusto in Exult. It deals nakedly with some age-old human questions, the tackling of which I find incredibly courageous. Quirk dares ask some of life's most fundamental questions: What is the meaning of existence? Why do we die and after we are gone, will we have meant anything at all? How should we spend the time we have been given on this earth?

“Although I laughed out loud more times than I can remember, Joe Quirk’s humor is directed at the people who ask these questions and live and die trying to answer them, never at the questions themselves. That's what I mean by his courage as a writer. He attacks these philosophical questions head-first, unblinkingly, seriously, and very honestly, as if they had never been asked before.

“The flight sequences, particularly Jack's fall from the sky, are thrilling. The writing put me up in those clouds, and through the eyes of Jack Ostruck I saw myself and my life down below. I have asked myself so many of Jack's questions in my own life, have suffered so many of his doubts. When Jack thinks about the futility of fathering people who will then go on to die, that we put people on earth so they can start the race to the grave—that one really hit home for me.

“Exult is a unique piece of work. Quirk’s intelligence, wit, and, yes I'll say it, his wisdom and heart shine through. His unique Quirk angle, his direct prose, his unusual and fresh take on even ordinary things kept me turning the pages.”

 

From Mike Chorost, author of Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), winner of the 2006 PEN award for Creative Nonfiction. Exult is mentioned on page 158 of his book.

“Exult is a soaring novel about soaring -- but its nominal subject, hang gliding, is only a cover for its real goal: to express, in words that have the compression and punch of the best poetry, what it means to be truly alive. Exult is a homage to life in the shadow of death. With characters so vividly drawn you feel you know them like family, and its sheer high-tech poetry of the air, Exult splinters the rules that our timid, hypertechnological civilization has erected to keep us in servitude, and throws them onto a great glorious pyre of language that illuminates the soul. To read of Jack Ostruck's journey is to be awestruck.”

From Lolly Winston, author of two New York Times bestsellers, Good Grief ( Grand Central Publishing 2004) a #1 Book Sense Pick, and Happiness Sold Separately (Grand Central Publishing 2006):

“I loved this bird’s-eye, guy’s-point-of-view look into the curious subculture of hang gliding— but Joe Quirk’s book is about so much more. Tumbling into his wonderfully told story of life, death, friendship and love is a vicarious thrill not to be missed.”

From Tamim Ansary, author of the New York Times Pick of the Week, West of Kabul, East of New York (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002), and The Other Side of the Sky (Simon and Schuster 2005), winner of the Good Morning America “Story of My Life” contest:

“Now, you don't have to jump off a thousand-foot cliff into rivers of empty air to know how it feels. You can find out exactly, and I do mean exactly, down to the final nuance of philosophical and metaphysical implication, by reading Joe Quirk's Exult: the man knows how to write.”

From David Henry Sterry, author of Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man For Rent (Harper Collins, 2002), to be made into a series by HBO:

“Joe Quirk writes like the eye of a hurricane. Every single page there's some lovecrazy turn of phrase that makes you go: Damn, I wish I could do that! And he captures that Berkeley world so perfectly, I feel like if I ran into any of his characters at the Cheese Board I'd be able to invite them out for a de-caf soy latte. This book gives the phrase `high as a kite' a whole new meaning.”

From Erika Mailman, author of A Woman of Ill Fame (Heydey Books, 2007) and Witch's Trinity (Random House, 2007), which was a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book and nominated for the Bram Stoker Award:

"Twenty pages in and my adrenaline surges, heart in my throat. Joe Quirk's
prose is exquisite and his plotting impeccable. Instead of a five star
review, this book gets a galaxy."

From Raj Patel, author of the international bestseller, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Melville Books, 2008) named Book of the Year by the Australian Book Review:

"It's rare that writing can lift us to a better understanding of the world around us. It's rarer still when writers themselves seem to have wings. But Joe Quirk writes about flight, in every sense, with vivid, sensual intensity that let's us soar.

 

 

.