Customer Reviews

All About Lulu: A Novel

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4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is what Wally Lamb wanted to do with his novel "She's Come Undone" (1992)--write a bildungsroman about a sympathetic loser with a crazy family and a unique voice whose story, set over a span of decades, offers a glimpse of America's recent past. The difference is, Lamb almost pulled it off with a really good book. Evison not only pulls it off, but hits it out of the park with a great book--part "Catcher in the Rye," part "Lolita," part "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."

William Miller, his protagonist, is a wimpy vegetarian in a family of hulking, meat-eating bodybuilders. His step-sister, Lulu, is his lone comrade, and soon becomes the love of Will's life, the center of everything for him. Much of the novel dwells on what happens when his center abruptly abandons him, leaving him with a gaping hole to fill with something--Fatburgers, radio, Hot Dog Heaven, disastrous would-be one-night stands, even Kierkegaard. This idea of emptiness permeates the novel. " 'I feel like a bagel,' " one of Will's former teachers confides to him. " 'Like there's a hole in the center of me.' " Will's narrated response is succinct: "I lived that feeling for most of my life, but I didn't say so. There were times when I felt like the hole and not the bagel, but I didn't tell him that either."

Serious stuff, true. But rather than devolve into a whining diatribe, like a third-rate Holden Caulfield, "All About Lulu" is both very funny and very honest. Evison takes William, an outcast within his own family, and reveals him with all his flaws and pettiness as well as with his capacity to love and grow and learn. Nicely tied-up happy endings aren't plentiful in this novel. "No pain, no gain" is the Miller family motto, and William faces plenty of pain and loss, but all against a hazy background of hope against all odds. While William is by far the most engaging character, the supporting cast is solid--Big Bill, William's bodybuilding father; Eugene Gobernecki, ex-Soviet emigre and fierce capitalist; Troy, William's best friend and romantic rival; and, of course, Lulu, who is both stepsister and siren to William and is wisely kept off-stage for much of the novel by Evison. Her appearances are startling and convincing, and even when she is gone, Will--and by extension, the reader--basks in her afterglow. Along the way Will shows us life in America from the '60s to the '90s, from the Summer of Love to the Reagan Revolution and the grunge movement in Seattle. There's even a hilarious cameo appearance by a certain former bodybuilder turned movie star.

For everyone who's had to suffer unrequited or even semi-requited love, and that covers most people on the planet, "All About Lulu" is a must.

i heard a friend describe All About Lulu as a book with a bruised heart. i can't think of a more apt description. wounded and bruised at it's core, it is also tender, insightful, loving, and often hilarious. characters that could easily have come off as cartoonish, or mere quirky templates, in Evison's hands become fully realized, filled with life, detail, and breath. the character's aren't just "lived in" (in the writerly sense) they are also lived with and learned from. Will's obsessive fixation with his first love, his enigma and stepsister Lulu, is rendered in a brutally honest way. filled with the bitter sting of youthful longing, it holds tight to that tension between the head's absurd grandiosity and the heart's attention to the softest, simplest of details. where it still holds true that all the answers to the universe are held within the smallest of minutiae.

admittedly, there were moments where the narrator's voice began to grate. i felt for him, but i wasn't sure i liked him or wanted to listen to him anymore. i had mixed feelings about the story's resolution. revelations that are meant to answer looming questions left me, a bit underwhelmed, with still more questions. while it made sense narratively, i just wanted the enigma back. at times, i feared that the writer's voice and ambition, were encroaching, threatening to overwhelm the narrative and the voice of the characters. all of this, however, is minor quibbling with a book this generous, with this much heart, capable of provoking this much emotion. for any personal reservations i might have had at first read, i know it's a book i want to share with others.

"All about Lulu" is a rare blend of books: a fun summer read with enough humorous philosophical asides to keep you thinking long after you've turned the last page; a coming-of-age story with an insightful maturity about what it means to be a part of an American family. (And no, not the kind of dour American family novel that makes you wish you had been raised by wolves.) It's a pleasure reading a book that continually surprises you and revels in its own Dickensian assortment of memorable characters

"How do you mend a broken heart?" the Bee Gees asked. I'd tell you how Lulu's narrator, William Miller, would answer that question - but that'd be giving away the ending. (And the ending alone is worth the price of admission.)

As I greedily read All About Lulu, with the wit dripping from my chin and philosophical musings staining my favorite t-shirt, I finished this meal feeling full and satisfied.

All About Lulu is a book exploring the American psyche from the 1960's up to the 1990's through the mind of Will Miller, a runt in a family of bodybuilders. And though the main protagonist is Will, it really is all about Lulu, a force that not only changes Will's life, but kind of changed mine too.

Mr Evison weaved this tale with much humor and detail. We grow up with the Millers and can see the changes in the Miller's Pico Street household roll with the times. And I learned that the world is made of meat... and... no pain, no gain.

Excellent first novel from an author I'm sure we'll be reading more of... and so my sentence doesn't end in a preposition I should say, great read.

There is humor in the pain, shock in the pleasure and awe in the philosophy of Will Miller's tale. We discover powerful obsessions that shape the world around him and reveal to us how people evolve through the one thing we all endure in the course of our lives: change.

The characters are real, twisted, and lovable. Entertaining from start to finish this book is a great summer read that will carry you away, tripping lightly through the heavy details of one man's life, and leave you refreshed at the other end.

It's good. Read it.

Jonathan Evison's newest book "All About Lulu" is the one of those brilliant coming of age novels that make you agonize and adore everything about maturity. The story's narrator Will is a characters who is not beautiful or extraordinary. However he is incredibly real and every page in the book has Will slapping the reader in the face or making him fall out of their chair laughing (and occasionally weeping).

I was given the book as a gift as I had not heard of it before. I cannot explain how much I enjoyed what I found in these pages. It is a quick and fun read where the authors wit and writing style seriously make you not want to give up the book for the night.

This is what makes Evison's work so wonderful. Far too many times stories of this genre are cutesy or depressing tales of change and survival, in "All About Lulu" we ignore this myopic worldview. Here a glimmer of the light is shined on the absurdity of growing up. Will has to constantly battle with himself in determining the line between obsession and adoration.

This battle takes us on a young man's journey to learning everything about himself and about love of life. To discuss that journey here would be a great disservice to you, because the power of this story is revealed as it opens before you. And now review should take that from you.

This novel came at me unexpected. When I first ordered the book, I really didn't think it was going to deliver quite what it did.

The whole thing is about this kid, William, who falls in love with his stepsister, Lulu, and for a time she loves him back. But at 15 she goes away for a summer and when she returns, it's all over. She retreats from him - from everything, really - and he's left to obsess from a distance, not knowing exactly what drove the wedge between them.

What really surprised me were the characters. The body-builder dad, the low-brow twins, the post-hippie stepmom, the daft rich boy, the Soviet apartment manager... There's a lot of cliches they could fall into, and they do at first because we always see people as cliches of themselves when we first meet them (or at least caricatures), but then they emerge as people. Or, we slowly get to discover them. It wasn't all laid out from the beginning; we had to get to know them. Evison did a great job pacing the characters and knew the right details to let us in on their lives.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. The ending delivered and it was a great journey getting there.

Evison has got something going here, and I am looking forward to reading more of him.

This debut book has got something special going for it and I can see why it has become so popular and brought Evison into the spotlight. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. There is something about humor - not the guffaw, guffaw type, but the laughter through tears variety - that can't be forced, and Evison is gifted in seeing the poignant but true silliness we all put ourselves through. It is, first of all, in the voice of young Will, our narrator, in the running *likeability* of that narration that the reader relaxes and allows the first chuckles to appear. But it secondly, and more to the point, in the truth of what is said in this story that makes the humor more than just a cheap laugh, but a laugh of recognition.

I am not saying that it is not a funny book, per se. You must read it to see what I mean.

I also find it an intriguingly American book. I remember the times well - post Hippie, proto Reagan - and as young Will gets some wheels, moves out of the house and into the world of community college and his own empty box of an apartment, and his horizons open up, it is behind the steering wheel and out on the interstates that this coming of age story really happens. I recognize this arc - the references to happy meals and Thai sticks - so maybe the laugh is on me in the end.

I liked this book. I liked the story, and I liked the characters. I liked the author. And I wished the story had gone on more. Looking forward to reading more of this world called Evison.

If the son of Jorel had gone through what the main character, Will Miller had gone through, the future man of steel would have been so broken spiritually enough to timidly offer to do more than kneel before Zod.

I consumed this book like Eugene's Heavenly Hot Dog with relish.

I vote we go to the Westminster Abbey and dig up Charles Dicken's corpse, prop what left of him on the gravestone, and politely inform him that we have moved on to another masterpiece of literature, ALL ABOUT LULU by Jonathan Evison.

If you are looking for a good book, this is it. Evison has created a novel that is at once funny, touching, sad, quirky, intelligent and real. It is thoroughly captivating from the first paragraph until the wonderful last paragraph. We get to ride along with the protagonist Will Miller as he grows from a young boy with all the answers into young man struggling to understand the world and the people around him. All About Lulu is full of great characters who we get to know and care about as real people. I cannot recommend this book enough.