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“Mr. Kramer has a gift for angst and honesty. . . his dialogue is funny and captivating” - New York Times

“Exquisite . . . These Things Happen is greater than the tactility of its descriptions and the tragicomic vivacity of its characters. is a novel of the sort that defines generations. Weaving together the individual struggles of his various characters with profound empathy, Kramer asks the reader to consider the limitations of genial political correctness, and even the very notion of love . . . Beauty and tragedy, adoration and resentment perch simultaneously on single sentences, and readers will be hard-pressed to resist the resultant emotional pull. If, as Wesley muses, ‘everything is practice for conversations that haven’t happened yet, with people [we’ve] yet to meet,’ then wandering the pages of Kramer’s novel may be a crucial warm-up exercise for us all. A dazzling tour de force, alternately exhilarating and devastating, and, at all turns, revelatory.” - Foreword Reviews

“...a novel of almost-shocking empathy and love.” - Salon.com

“An introspective and contemporary character study . . . Earlier in his career, Mr. Kramer worked on the acclaimed television dramas, “My So-Called Life” and “Thirtysomething.” From the former, he has borrowed the focus on teen angst as narrated by perceptive teens. From the latter, he has borrowed the insecurities of highly competent parents caught in the act of flogging themselves for their non-omniscience. These Things Happen is Richard Kramer’s first novel, but he is no novice. This is a well-measured and mature debut.”—New York Journal of Books

“Emotionally resonant . . . The humanity and love between two people thrown together by circumstance is Kramer’s triumph” - Publishers Weekly

“[A] warmhearted and appealing novel….Wesley is a remarkable and well-drawn character, as are the adults in his life. Kramer’s tale of coming-of-age and coming out should have wide appeal.”—Booklist

“…smart, tender….The work elegantly balances heavy and light, and its humor is charming. …Fans of Kramer’s work should enjoy the novel’s clever, quirky dialogue, the characters’ fervid inner monologues and the affectionate depictions of city life. A decidedly 21st-century family tale, These Things Happen is a poignant portrait of love in all its forms.”— BookPage.com

“Richard Kramer’s These Things Happen is a jewel of a book: incisive, funny, wise, and moving. It prompted me, on almost every page, to ask the question I’m most glad to find myself asking of a novel, How did the writer know that?” - -Michael Cunningham

“[A] smart, funny, and insightful exploration….a touching coming-of-age story.”— BlogCritics

“[W]itty and often moving….a compassionate novel with a heart as big as New York City. There are no villains here, only flawed human beings: culturally enlightened New Yorkers who have personal blind spots. We are more than happy to forgive Kramer’s occasional lapse into sentimentality because so much of the emotion in the book is genuine and earned. One of the most poignant scenes is when George receives a call to come to the hospital after Wesley is attacked. When he arrives and asks to see him, the receptionist asks George who he is, and George realizes there is no label for the man who is Wesley’s father’s partner. “Oh, I’m not anyone – I’m just George,” he answers. Moments like this one remind us of how in the subtlest of ways our relationships are challenged, and they give this very funny novel much of its depth. These Things Happen is a compulsively readable and affecting take on the way we live now.”— Lambda Literary

“It’s one of the best adult LGBTQ books that I’ve ever read, frankly, and I wish all gay writers had the honesty and the insight that Kramer showed in this debut novel….The depth with each voice is what makes These Things Happen spectacular, though. Kramer shows characterization and character arcs like nobody’s business….I can’t recommend this book enough, readers. There’s just so much to discuss about it, and I’d love to see what you all think of it. It is that type of book….I can safely say that this is my favorite adult LGBTQ novel of the past few years - if not my favorite adult LGBTQ novel period - and it does the one thing that authors in this genre don’t do enough: remind us all that LGBTQ people are just like everyone else.”— Dreaming in Books

“Brings his eye for human nature to his debut novel.”— Marie Claire

“It feels fresh and of our time, and the multiple narrators are carried off very well. In short, this is a very funny book…that was a real treat to read.”-— Emily Crowe, As the Crowe Flies and Reads

“Told from the perspective of many of its characters, what the reader learns from each vantage point is that no one is really sure of him or herself – we think we know who we are, but we constantly doubt it. Do others see us as we really are, or as we pretend to be? Can others, those closest to us, know more about us than we know about ourselves? How can listening to and learning about our friends, our parents, our children, give us deeper insight into who we are? This book asks a lot of questions and it answers few of them, but that’s the point – the discovery is ours to make. I can easily imagine These Things Happen becoming an indie/cult classic, someday.”— Roof Beam Reader

“Artful, thoughtful and extremely funny, this is a wonderful first novel about artifice and the discovery of true feeling, about the roles we play and what we choose to make of them.” –Cathleen Schine

“Like the two main characters it so unforgettably etches, Richard Kramer’s first novel embodies the greatest virtues of both maturity and youth: it manages to be both wise and wide-eyed, sage and sensitive, extremely funny and, in the end, disarmingly touching. Kramer has taken the qualities that have distinguished his celebrated work in the past—the grownup’s hard-won shrewdness about the way the world works and the adolescent’s heartbreaking emotional nakedness—and fashioned from them a very affecting work of fiction.”—Daniel Mendelsohn

“Beneath its glimmering wit and knowing portrayal of a very particular New York, Richard Kramer’s beguiling first novel is a fresh, brave love story: a story of the many complex ways in which men—and boys reaching toward becoming men—love one another. In his wonderful assembly of fathers, sons, husbands, longtime companions, and adolescents grappling with the heavenly hell of sexual awakening, there is precious little territory of the male heart into which Kramer does not venture with audacity and tenderness. I closed this book feeling delighted, moved, and oddly privileged to have had such a wise escort on a journey both familiar and utterly foreign!” – Julia Glass

RICHARD KRAMER

THESE THINGS HAPPEN

Set among Manhattan’s high-powered liberal elite and told through an ensemble of endearing voices, These Things Happen is a not-quite-coming-of-age story about a modern family. Fifteen year old Wesley, a tenth grader, has moved from his mother and stepfather’s home to live with his father and his father’s male partner for a school term so that father and son might have a chance to bond again. But when Wesley finds himself unexpectedly at the center of an act of violence, everyone around him must reexamine themselves, their assumptions and attitudes.

“Like the two main characters it so unforgettably etches, Richard Kramer’s first novel exemplifies the virtues of both youth and maturity: it manages to be both wise and wide-eyed, sage and sensitive, deeply funny and, in the end, disarmingly touching. The man behind ThirtySomething and My So-Called Life has taken his trademark qualities—the grownup’s shrewdness about the way the world works and the adolescent’s disarming emotional nakedness—and fashioned from them a very affecting work of fiction.”- Daniel Mendelsohn

$16.00 | Trade Paper | 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 | 272 pages

March 2014

ISBN: 978-1-60953-101-0 | Carton Quantity: 24

EISBN:

A lot can happen in a day, sometimes. Not every day, of course. Most have one event, and that’s if you’re lucky. Many have less, which seems especially true in our school, which is hard to get into and committed to serving the community but is also, as a rule, unthrilling. Maybe things pick up in eleventh grade, which is when Mr. Frechette, a teacher we like, says our brains have developed to the point where we can grasp irony, accept ambivalence, and acknowledge the death’s head that lurks at the edge of all human endeavor. His exact words; I put them in my phone. We’ll see, although I trust him.
Mr. Frechette can get sour, but he’s also pretty wise.

Maybe today’s a preview of next year, then, because a lot has happened in it, even without the death’s head. School’s out. Theo and I are on our way to tae kwon do. Wherever you look, whoever and whatever you see seems glad to be a New Yorker, not just people but buildings, and pigeons, and signs. Theo’s my best friend, and always has been. He says that’s just because he’s the only boy in my school who’s not named Max or Jake, but that’s not it at all (which he knows). It’s simple. He bores easily. So do I. But we don’t bore each other, and that’s since in utero, practically, as our moms met in Lamaze class and got to be friends. He got his name because his mom wrote a book about the loser relatives of famous artists. Theo Van Gogh was Vincent Van Gogh’s brother; Mrs. Rosen, Theo’s mom, pronounces the name (I quote Theo here) “like she was choking on a rugelach.”). Theo V.G. knew Vincent was the talented one and worked hard to make sure the world knew it, too. I admire that, and hope I would do the same, if I had a brother who was an insane depressed genius, which I don’t. I’m an only child.

Richard Kramer is the Emmy and multiple Peabody award winning writer, director and producer of numerous TV series, including Thirtysomething, My So-called Life, Tales of the City, and Once and Again. His first short story appeared in the New Yorker while he was still an undergraduate at Yale. This is his first novel.

Richard Kramer's Website

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