There's a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From: A Memoir

In his third book, Charles (Grab Onto Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way) chronicles his early years in New York. The aspiring writer was 24 when he arrives in 1998 hoping to jump-start a literary career. Instead, he finds himself stuck in a dead-end job rewriting promotional material for Morgan Stanley in their World Trade Center office. The pay is good but the work is dull, fiction rejection notices pile up, and he finds it increasingly difficult to pursue writing. Abortive romances compound his misery. His life (and his memoir) seems to be going nowhere. But the morning of September 11 Charles is sitting at his desk, and thus begins a long and much-needed narrative of his experience fleeing the building, dealing with the horror of the day, the resulting emotional distress, and feelings of survivor's guilt. It's a gripping account told in the muted style of a writer with true authority. (Oct.)