Garden State

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Garden State is a 1992 novel by Rick Moody about a group of teenagers in suburban New Jersey struggling towards adulthood. It was awarded a Pushcart Press Editors' Book Award.
The novel is about three young people in their early 20s living in Haledon, New Jersey. Although the exact year in which the novel is set is unclear, it appears to be the early 1980s. The book's protagonist is Alice, a young woman who struggles to maintain a dating relationship with a young man named Dennis. Dennis' half-brother, Lane, recently attempted to commit suicide, and has just been released from a state mental institution following this attempt to end his life. Alice, Dennis and Lane struggle to make the passage to adulthood even as their families and the economy crumble around them, and new social mores, music and politics tempt them in different directions. As in many of author Rick Moody's novels, the events chronicled in the book culminate in a cathartic event which leads to several epiphanies among the major characters.