Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, university fundraiser Milo Burke is offered one last chance by his former employer: He must reel in a potential donor--a major ask--who turns out to be Milo\'s sinister college classmate.
Probing many themes-- or, perhaps, anxieties--including work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, Sam Lipsyte\'s The Ask is a burst of genius by an author who has already demonstrated that the truly provocative and important fictions are often the funniest ones..
And the give won\'t come cheap.
But it turns out that the ask is Milo\'s sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart.
Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is offered one last chance by his former employer: he must reel in a potential donor--a major ask--who, mysteriously, has requested Milo\'s involvement.
A New York Times Book Review Editors\' Choice Milo Burke, a development officer at a third-tier university, has not been developing: after a run-in with a well-connected undergrad, he finds himself among the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed.
From the author of Home Land and Venus Drive comes Sam Lipsyte\'s searing, beautiful, and deeply comic novel, The Ask.
And the give won\'t come cheap.
Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, university fundraiser Milo Burke is offered one last chance by his former employer: He must reel in a potential donor--a major ask--who turns out to be Milo\'s sinister college classmate
