Early Praise for WONDERKID by Wesley Stace

Wesley Stace's new novel Wonderkid is almost here! This long-awaited novel will go on sale February 27, and the advance praise is pouring in!


“I can’t believe that this amazing book exists. Wonderkid is by far the best music novel I’ve ever read, and the most unexpectedly wild ride I’ve ever been on. Every detail is perfect. Wonderkid is uplifting, inspiring, unhinged, and unpredictable, just like rock ‘n’ roll itself.” - Dan Zanes

“Wesley Stace has written one of the very few novels about rock bands and the music business that doesn’t have a single false note or outsider-wannabe pretensions. It’s a relief–and a joy– to read about the weird particularities of the lives of musicians by someone who knows the world so intimately. He deconstructs, with an elegant and sharp eye, the heightened sense of the unreality of fame, the relentless grind of touring, and the Ego and the Id made deliciously manifest in the Wonderkids (my favorite new band.) He is both ruthless and compassionate, but never cynical. I thought about these characters even when I wasn’t reading the book, and the story will stay with me for a very long time. WONDERKID has both enormous entertainment value and serious literary worth, a very hard trick to pull off.”
- Rosanne Cash, author of Composed

“Highly pleasurable. And unusual, not least because this is a rock’n'roll novel written by someone who actually knows what he’s talking about.”
- Peter Carey, author of The Chemistry of Tears

” Rock and roll is an infantile business, but never more so than in the hands of The Wonderkids, a group of post-teens, playing music for pre-teens, whilst living chaotic adult lives. In WONDERKID, Wesley Stace absolutely captures the band experience: the triumphs, the letdowns, the sell-outs, the success, and the scandal, with an extra helping of absurdity. There were times reading this book that I could actually smell the dank dressing rooms, or feel the bus rolling down the highway to the next gig.” - Peter Buck

“WONDERKID is a gem, a rock and roll novel written from the inside, with an insider’s knowledge of music and the music business, and all the exhilaration and indignities that come with the territory. Wesley Stace is a wise and witty guide to the career of Blake Lear and the Wonderkids, a fictional band that becomes so real over the course of the novel that you’ll think you heard them on the radio.”
- Tom Perrotta, author of Nine Inches

“Wesley Stace has always been the only genuinely gifted fiction writer who also happens to be a rock star, but WONDERKID is the book he was born to write. And if you prefer your novels brazen, poignant and hilarious, as I do, you were born to read it. Like a great show, this will stay with you long after the last cymbal crash and power strum.”
- Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask

“Wesley Stace’s WONDERKIDS is a marvelous satiric mashup of rock-n-roll and pack-n-plays. It’s sweet and funny and knowing — and this is me, holding up my lighter for more.”
- Joshua Ferris, author of The Unnamed

“Wesley Stace writes with verve, pace and great good humor. Wonderkid is a flamboyant novel about rock & roll, sex and drugs, broken dreams and Brits on tour in America. Buy it at once.”
- Patrick McGrath, author of Constance

“At turns illuminating and heartbreaking — but always funny — it’s a Visit from the Goon Squad for the kiddie-music world. A pitch-perfect excavation into the lighter heart of the music industry.”
- Colin Meloy, author of Wildwood

"Finally, a sex, drugs and rock n' roll book for Dan Zanes fans! Wonderkid also happens to be one of the best books about fathers and sons since Turgenev." - Gary Shteyngart, author Super Sad True Love Story