Michael Dahlie is the author of two novels, A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2009, and The Best of Youth. Dahlie is the recipient of a Whiting Award in Fiction, and his short fiction has appeared in journals and magazines including Harper’s, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, and Tin House. Dahlie has also written widely under pen names, including many children’s books and stories in literary journals. His novels for young people have received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and The Horn Book, and have also appeared on several year-end lists, including The Washington Post’s Top Ten Books For Young Readers. Short stories he’s written under pseudonyms have been published in places including The Yale Review, Epoch, Harvard Review, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. Dahlie is an Associate Professor in Butler University’s English Department and MFA Program and directs the Mont Blanc Writing Workshops, held every June in Chamonix, France.
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A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful LivingA Novel
In 1959, Prentice Ross astounded his parents by enrolling in aviation school instead of going to Yale. Of course, being generous and humane people, Prentice’s parents didn’t have anything against pilots per se. It just happened that they had never met one, nor had they ever even thought of how a person became one. In fact, they knew not a single person who drove any machine at all (for a living, that is), so they were at a loss when they tried to imagine what their son’s future would be like.
A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living:A Novel -
A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful LivingA Novel
“Well, Arthur, I should probably tell you that I do think I have a small drinking problem. I mean, I don’t think that should be held against me where the kids are concerned. But I think it’s true and I need to figure out what to do about it. I’ve done programs before. But they never seem quite right for me. We live near Switzerland, though. That’s a good thing. If there’s one thing the Swiss are good at, it’s running rehab centers. It’s like the Minnesota of Europe.”
A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living:A Novel -
A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful LivingA Novel
As Arthur stood up, he felt sure that he would soon be handcuffed and led off to jail. He thought of the French’s notorious belief in occult things like handwriting analysis and imagined some sort of quasi-psychologist describing perspiration patterns and unusual eye motions that always show up when a person is lying. He was now so nervous that he wondered if he’d even be able to walk out the door. But he managed well enough, and after saying goodbye to the now-stone-faced deputy prosecutor and the diligent junior officer, he started looking forward to a large glass of the pine-needle liqueur.
A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living:A Novel
“Charming . . . Mr. Dahlie’s debut novel takes a surprising tack. It deals quite affectionately with its central character and his frailties.” —The New York Times [on A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living]
“A tour filled with moments of grace and angst, and an overwhelming sense that compassion matters.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune [on A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living]
“You will root for this winsome, unique narrator to the very end.” —Boston Sunday Globe [on A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living]
Selected Works
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.”