Nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award
“[Almost Everything Very Fast is] a story of family secrets that reads like a fairy tale, complete with the darkness essential to such tales. . . . It's an unusual and deeply affecting portrayal of a father and a son. . . . Kloeble's plot is complex and often takes readers in unexpected directions, but he skillfully brings everything back together. . . . Enormously satisfying.”
Cedar Rapids Gazette
“Moving… Kloeble's cinematic vision and vivid storytelling encompass a range of human emotion and iniquity.”
Publishers Weekly
“Cleverly structured [and] consistently well written, and it vividly evokes a place—Bavaria’s ‘alpine uplands’—that many of us have never visited.”
Star Tribune
Almost Everything Very Fast
A charming and suspenseful novel with a dark secret at its heart, set in an insular Bavarian village
Albert is nineteen, grew up in an orphanage, and never knew his mother. All his life Albert had to be a father to his father: Fred is a child trapped in the body of
an old man. He spends his time reading encyclopedias, waves at green cars, and is known as the hero of a tragic bus accident. Albert senses that Fred, who has just been given five months
left to live, is the only one who can help him learn more about his background.
With time working against them, Albert and Fred set out on an adventurous voyage of discovery that leads them via the underground sewers into the distant past—all the way back to a night in
August 1912, and to the story of a forbidden love.
Almost Everything Very Fast, Christopher Kloeble's US debut, is a sensitive and dramatic family saga and page-turning road novel all in one.
“Almost Everything Very Fast is ingeniously structured, intelligently written, and moves at a steady, forceful pace. It is entirely enjoyable, from start to finish.”
Ha Jin
“The journey to bring [the parallel narratives running through Almost Everything Very Fast] together is a compelling one. . . . Credit Kloeble's unshowy, matter-of-fact—even tender—delivery for bringing in the light.”
Washington Independent Review of Books
“Two brilliant characters, a childlike father figure who, against all odds, understands that ‘we are all Most Beloved Possessions,’ and a boy who has pushed ‘the sound barrier of penitential shoelace tying’ at his orphanage, set off to discover their origins in a journey that plumbs the depths of human hearts and human history with effortless wisdom and humor. With gorgeous prose and a delicious sleight-of-hand that makes his ensemble cast sparkle as brightly as his plot, Christopher Kloeble spins a tale that brings home the truth that the past is much closer than we imagine it to be. Few novels are as satisfying at the end as they are at the beginning and Kloeble nails it.”
Ru Freeman