By turns hilarious and bittersweet, Andy Mozina’s winning debut novel introduces a charming new hero for our times: a dysfunctional, divorced family man who’s just trying to keep it all together.

Matthew Grzbc is a talented musician with a passion for the concert harp. He is a divorced dad who lives in Chicago, has a sexy girlfriend, and a major, potentially life-changing audition with an orchestra on the horizon. At least that’s how he appears on paper, but take one peek inside Matt’s blockhead and a very different man starts to emerge: an obsessive, self-sabotaging Midwesterner, recently and unhappily divorced, fumbling through his relationship with his curiously neurotic four-year-old daughter, and on a collision course in his romantic life by grasping at any remotely affectionate warm body, including that of his ex-wife. Instead of playing to sold-out concert halls, he spends his days plucking out “Send in the Clowns” at hotel brunches and his weekends serenading the captive audience at the local nursing home.

When his father dies unexpectedly (while listening to a meditation tape), Matt’s life begins to come untethered. In quick succession his ex-wife gets engaged, his girlfriend begins to pull away, and his daughter starts acting out. With his audition rapidly approaching Matt is paralyzed by panic—why can’t he hold it together and follow his passion? And what does that even mean, if you’re not sure what it is you really want? Funny, poignant, and thoroughly engaging, CONTRARY MOTION is a journey deep inside a male mind as it searches—desperately—for a way to balance life, love, and a harp.

 

ANDY MOZINA is a professor of English at Kalamazoo College and the author of the short story collections The Women Were Leaving the Men that won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and Quality Snacks, which was a finalist for the Flannery O’Conner Prize. His fiction has also appeared in numerous magazines, including Tin House and McSweeney’s. He lives in Michigan with his wife and daughter.

 

“A new and deeply original voice.”—Ann Patchett

“Standing between world-class harpist Matt Grzbc and his dream, a permanent position in a top orchestra, is just about everybody in his life. This brilliant debut novel zigzags across Chicago’s neighborhoods exploring the obsession a striving artist must have for his craft, as he also makes a living and nourishes those near him, especially his eccentric and precocious six-year-old daughter. A wonderful story—beautifully written, hilarious, tortured, and filled with heavenly music.” —Bonnie Jo Campbell, Once Upon a River and National Book Award finalist American Salvage

“Charming … The painfully self-aware Matt has a great sense of humor, but his comic insights don’t help him much as he faces a confounding array of personal problems. . . . The pleasures of Mozina’s writing never flag.”—Kirkus

“No portrait of an artist brings alive vulnerability, hilarity, desperation, hipness, absurdity, and painful steadfastness as splendidly as Andy Mozina’s Contrary Motion. A dazzling, unforgettable novel.” —Mark Wisniewski, Watch Me Go

“Andy Mozina is able to transport us from hilarity to pathos in a breathtaking, heartbreaking moment.”—Peter Ho Davies, The Welsh Girl and Equal Love