Lying Low [Mass Market Paperback]

Diane Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 1988

A National Book Award finalist, this novel relates the events of four crucial days in the lives of four people sharing a rambling Victorian house, "lying low" and harboring secrets not meant to be shared. Theo Wait, a middle-aged former ballet dancer, and her brother, Anton, have taken in two boarders: beautiful Lynn, who never receives mail or visitors; and energetic and effusive Ouida, a Brazilian student and illegal alien who won't let complicated bureaucratic wrangles and constant fear of deportation taint her vision of America as the land of opportunity. A faked identity, a search for one of the FBI's most wanted escaped prison convicts, and a Brazilian feast that spins out of control kick the plot into high gear. While each of these characters has been plagued by a sense of impending disaster, the terrible thing they've all been fearing comes from an entirely unexpected direction, shattering all of their lives.
• Johnson's most recent novel, Le Divorce, was a phenomenal success.
• The thousands of new fans Johnson made with Le Divorce will be eager to read other books by this witty and delectable writer.
• Lying Low was nominated for a National Book Award.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Fawcett (June 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449215598
• ISBN-13: 978-0449215593
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,313,017 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of her best, April 30, 1998

By A Customer

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This review is from: Lying Low (William Abrahams Book) (Paperback)

I was thrilled to see this book back in print -- I'd lent out my copy years ago and despaired of ever having it again in my bookshelf. Diane Johnson is marvelously shrewd about people (you often want to strangle her characters for their obtuseness and selfishness even as you sympathize with them completely) and style (is there anyone after Forster who jumps more deftly among differing points of view?) but, alas, less clever about plotting. Many of her novels end with acts of violence that seem to me less like comments about society than attempts by an author to find some way of extricating herself from her own plot. I'd include the endings of both "Le Divorce" and "Persian Nights" here, and, in a different way, "The Shadow Knows." For my money "Lying Low" is the novel where Johnson best united her usual acute characterization and epigrammatic style with a surprising, yet wholly logical and satisfying plot.
The characters, most of them, live in a big Victorian house in a university town that I'll bet is modeled on Davis, California. The time is 1974-5, the noises from the '60s still echo in the air, and the central character, an elderly ex-dancer with mild bohemian tendencies, makes part of her living by renting out rooms in her family house. She lives with her brother, a sort of low-wattage Ansel Adams, and two boarders, a young Brazilian woman who is hiding from the INS and a somewhat older American woman who is hiding from the FBI. The novel takes place over five days and involves baby-sitting, Brazilian cooking, and many Mason jars full of high explosive. Good stuff.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars HEARTBREAKING AND INDELIBLE., November 10, 2001

By 

Waleed Eissa - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lying Low (William Abrahams Book) (Paperback)

A beautifully fractured tale, moored in anguish but told with compelling wit, eroticism, and consumate wonder.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great characterization, meandering plot, August 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Lying Low (William Abrahams Book) (Paperback)

I'm a big fan of Diane Johnson's novels Le Divorce and Le Mariage for her lovely writing, dead-on characterizations and her observant articulation of the cultural differences between Americans and the French. She has the ability to create characters who are superficially a "type" (such as young American girl in Paris, superchic young Parisian woman, masculine American expatriate journalist, etc.) and make them extremely interesting by giving us a view to their inner thoughts. They never ring false. I was excited to read Lying Low for this reason. Lying Low is another example of her gift for characters, especially with the characters Marybeth/Lynn (the fugitive) and Theo. Other characters are Ouida, the Brazilian immigrant, and Anton, Theo's photographer brother. However, this book was also a bit disappointing in terms of plot. Those four aforementioned characters share a Victorian house in Orris, California, a small college town near Sacramento (read: Davis). Not a whole lot happens externally -- everything important seems to occur inside the characters' heads, and the ending is nothing to speak of -- a rather farfetched catastrophe (not coincidentally very similar to Le Divorce and to a lesser extent Le Mariage). Johnson appears to have first published it in the late 1970's. Perhaps she hadn't yet honed her storytelling abilities to the degree shown in her most recent novels. I liked it, but it wasn't wholly satisfying.