FORWARD MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST
"Hold the phone, kick down the door, and yell from the rooftops of all those American blue-collar towns that give birth to so many of our artists: a new one is among us, and his name is Anthony D'Aries. This man writes like Charlie Parker played the alto sax, with grit and verve and a willing free-fall into hard-won, illuminated truths. The Language of Men is a profoundly important book by a major new talent!"
-Andre Dubus III, Townie
"The Language of Men isn't just a beautifully written memoir about a Vietnam vet father and the complicated legacy he leaves to his son; it's also a disturbing, brutally honest, darkly funny meditation on masculinity, violence, and sexuality. Anthony D'Aries is a writer to watch."
-Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers
"This book is an impressive debut from a young writer. Mr. D'Aries has many admirable traits, including a distinctive style. It is a pleasure to keep company with him in these moving and insightful pages."
-Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remains
"Anthony D'Aries has allowed his Vietnam War veteran father to speak to us without filters. This is a brave and candid journey into a post-war American father-son relationship and into the unsentimental, dynamic complexities of Vietnam's own post-war realities. The Language of Men made me think, pause, and re-think about masculinities in wars and post-wars."
-Cynthia Enloe, Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War
"In The Language of Men, Anthony D’Aries tells a father and son story so honest and clear that it illuminates the lives of all of us, men and women alike. As he explores his own patrimony in nuanced and supple prose, he comes to understand the distorted, self-defeating version of masculinity he’s been bequeathed. Disassembling inherited ideas about women and war and sex and death, the way he disassembled household appliances as a boy, D’Aries enacts a painstaking inquiry into the nature of love, friendship, conflict, marriage, and family. Here is a writer who is nobody’s fool, who is without a shred of cynicism, and who means every word. The Language of Men is a work of great beauty and power."
-Richard Hoffman, Half the House