• Age: 16 to 18
• Grade: 11 to 12

Overwhelmed by anxiety, his mother's declining mental health and the mysterious disappearance of his father, Kepler Pressler breaks into the local zoo and attempts to set free a family of chimpanzees. When Kepler wakes up to fi nd himself in a mental health institute, he finds that his real troubles have only just begun. Gracelessland is a comic and despairing depiction of an unscrupulous family, filled with tender moments and calculated cruelties. It's about Elvis Presley, the pursuitof happiness, and the certain uncertainty of memory.

"The son of an 'alcoholic, taxi-driving, amateur astronomer and a disillusioned manicurist', Kepler Pressler - the anti-hero of Adam Honsinger's startlingly assured first novel - does for the family-disfunction novel what Elvis did for rock n roll: he makes it bluesier, edgier, funnier, better." - Annabel Lyon

Adam Lindsay Honsinger's profile page

ADAM LINDSAY HONSINGER is a Torontobased writer and teacher. Many of his stories have appeared in literary journals such as Descant, Prism International, Other Voices, the Pottersfield Portfolio, and Exile Quarterly. Two of his stories were nominated for the Journey Prize, one of which won Silver at the 2010 National Magazine Awards.

"The son of an alcoholic, taxi-driving, amateur astronomer and a disillusioned manicurist, Kepler Pressler - the anti-hero of Adam Honsinger's startlingly assured first novel - does for the family-dysfunction novel what Elvis did for rock 'n roll: he makes it bluesier, edgier, funnier, better."- Annabel Lyon "admirably zany without ever tipping into quirk." - The Winnipeg Review "Nervy, audacious domestic drama with the guile and electricity of a Presley hip swivel, Gracelessland proves what many of us have long suspected: Honsinger is a writer of immeasurable talent, and family is an affliction from which few recover." - Nancy Lee "The broad-strokes familiarity of the overarching narrative allows Kepler's personal peculiarities - and Honsinger's skills as a writer - to shine through … a novel that feels fresh, rich, and heavy with the thrum of life." - Robert Wiersema, Quill and Quire