REVIEWS OF A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO GRACEFUL LIVING

2009 PEN/Hemingway Award Press Release: “Arthur Camden has run his family’s venerable import-export business into the ground.  Abandoned by his cheating wife, blackballed by the club he helped found, Michael Dahlie’s hero is a lost lamb who can’t do anything right.  Is it too late for this passive middle-aged blueblood to find his place in the world?  Flawless and dazzling, A Gentleman¹s Guide to Graceful Living is a wise and gentle satire that has us rooting for its hero even as we laugh at him.”

2010 Whiting Award Press Release: “The Whiting selection committee was taken with Mr. Dahlie’s  ‘Elegant prose, his splendid control, the entirely satisfying narrative shape of the novel. The understated humor never begs for attention, and there’s a lot of excellent social observation about the kind of Americans we used to see quite a bit more of in fiction.” They observed that the novel had some of the quality of Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, and saw in Mr. Dahlie  ‘A kinder, slightly more mischievous version of Louis Auchincloss — a rarity in our maximalist age, an endangered species.’”

“Exquisitely crafted, rife with sorrow and farce, and surprisingly moving.” — Julia Glass, National Book Award Winning author of Three Junes, in The Louisville Courier-Journal

A “discretely charming book … Mr. Dahlie brings a real sweetness to Arthur’s journey.”  — Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“This novel strikes me as the American version of The Fall by Camus. Dahlie writes elegantly and beautifully, which does not prevent him from dramatically delving into the raw terrain of the male psychology.” — Josip Novakovich, author of Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust

“You will root for this winsome, unique narrator to the very end.” — Mary Cotton, Boston Sunday Globe

“Filled with moments of grace and angst, and an overwhelming sense that compassion matters.”— The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“The endearingly understated story of a New York aristocrat who, under better circumstances, might have wound up in a Louis Auchincloss book. But he is undone by haplessness and self-doubt, rendered with dry acuity of observation. There is no old-money playground where Arthur Camden, congenitally maladroit, is safe from his own ability to bumble.” — CBS News (Summer Reading Picks)

“Michael Dahlie was a cipher to me before I read his wonderful new novel, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living,” and a cipher he shall remain. It’s funny, but not Carl Hiaasen-Christopher Buckley funny. Dahlie takes bigger risks, not pushing down so hard on the pedals, not pulling out the comic stops. He trusts the reader to be smart, relax and laugh. I did, a lot.” — Alex Beam, International Herald Tribune

“No fly fisherman can help but love this brilliant first novel. A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living is filled with ungentlemanly hilarity and ungentlemanly low-jinx, with poignant irony, uncommon wisdom, and shrewd insights into love and fly fishing clubs.” — Nick Lyons, author of In Praise of Wild Trout, Founder of Lyons Press

“Dahlie’s dark humor and light touch elevate this debut about a damaged man determined to make the best of the rest of his life.” — Booklist

“Almost no one could be less prepared for the vicissitudes of moden upper class divorce and dating than the retiring Arthur Camden and watching him navigate these tricky waters is both touching and hilarious. A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living is a reader’s guide to intelligent delight.” — Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street

“Michael Dahlie has written a wholly pleasurable and surprising book … a triumph of humorous restraint. He’s created an unlikely but endearing hero in Arthur Camden, and we cannot help but laugh and shudder and cheer as Arthur blunders his way through his rarefied world, which Dahlie renders in sly and pitch perfect detail. It is rare to find a book that is so funny – usually at the expense of its hapless main character – and yet so compassionate as well.” — Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Madeline is Sleeping

“A book as fine as this doesn’t come along often. A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living is very funny, yes, but it’s also tender in a way that amounts, at last, to a kind of elegy. Arthur Camden may get into a muddle, but he is a gentleman, and graceful too. That such rare men can have faith (or at least go on being patient with the rest of us) is the hope this book holds out. That such men still exist is what it seems to propose.” —  Louis B. Jones, author of California’s Over

“Michael Dahlie’s unusual and wonderful new novel, A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living, is a tour de force that manages to combine mellow wisdom with wicked cleverness. The tragicomic adventures of his hero show a feckless Everyman trying to do the right thing, but constantly stumbling against an unreceptive world. Dahlie is an impressive new writer who walks a fine line between compassion and irony, optimism and despair. There were moments when I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I never wanted to stop reading this absorbing book.” — Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Author of The Writing on the Wall

“A Reader will love Arthur at some times, will want to shake him at others, will roar with laughter at some of the situations he finds himself in, will treasure Arthur’s son, will want to shoot some of his friends, and will marvel at Arthur’s patience and what I guess is best described as his fortitude.” — Springfield Republican

“Mr. Dahlie is such a compassionate writer.” — bookslut.com

A “charming, laugh out loud novel.” — popgoesfiction.com

“Dahlie clearly has a knack for distilling a situation and getting right to the heart of a matter … perhaps [the book’s] greatest achievement is that Dahlie elicits sympathy from the reader for a character whose social class does not easily elicit such feelings. Although Arthur is a wealthy, white American male, many readers can appreciate a character who illustrates that the struggle for self-confidence is arduous and lifelong.” — mostlyfiction.com

A “funny, moving debut novel.” — booksandauthorsblog.com

A “witty and intelligent comedy of manners” — Janice Harayda, oneminutebookreviews.com