The Washington Story [Paperback]

Adam Langer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2006

In The Washington Story, Adam Langer revisits his extraordinary cast of characters from Crossing California, each inextricably linked by love, betrayal, reunions, sex, death, and rebirth-and all holding out hope that their dreams are worth pursuing, as they come of age in a very particular time in American history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For those of us who woefully turned the last page of Crossing California, Adam Langer's masterful debut, The Washington Story offers a gratifying, if not lengthy, reunion with the people and places whose stories so engaged readers the first time around. In this tightly packed sequel, Langer revisits the same West Rogers Park neighborhood in Chicago where we first met a fascinating cast of characters, from high schoolers Muley Scott Wills, Jill and Michelle Wasserstrom, and Hillel Levy to movie producers Mel Coleman and Carl "Slappit" Silverman, whose lives continue to intertwine in ways that make this expansive novel both a delight and a challenge to fully absorb.

Like in Crossing California, time and place are as central to the story as the characters themselves. The Washington Story takes place between 1982 and 1987, and follows the political career of Chicago mayor Harold Washington, the Challenger space shuttle disaster, and the changing landscape of both an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Chicago and the world beyond its borders. From a dorm room at Vassar to a hostel in West Berlin, Langer follows his characters across the street and around the globe, observing their behavior with a sharp eye for detail and an understated yet inspired sense of humor that can be unbelievably rewarding at times. ("He would sit alone at Ponderosa, where he would eat chili and pretend to read Jack Kerouac ... though when he would return alone to his hotel room, he would put down The Dharma Bums and pick up the GMAT study guide.") At one point in Jill's college career, she wonders if she could ever be considered prettier than her starlet sister Michelle. Yet according to Langer, it's "Not that she really cared about being pretty; she mostly cared about not being ugly."

Observations like these are what make The Washington Story so much more than a simple coming-of-age tale. Rather, Langer's unpretentious style, coupled with his immense talent for storytelling, rewards readers with a sequel worthy of its predecessor. --Gisele Toueg --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Langer's dense, sprawling follow up to Crossing California features the same ambitious clutch of high-schoolers on the cusp of Harold Washington's bid for Chicago mayor in 1982. In the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of West Rogers Park, junior Jill Wasserstrom works as a cub reporter for the Lane Leader and entertains a crush on irreverent senior editor Wes Sullivan; Jill's usual boyfriend, Muley Wills, is in Cape Canaveral working on the space shuttle Columbia and bedding his seductive lab partner. Jill's sister, Michelle, pops in from New York to snag the lead role in Mel Coleman's film Godfathers of Soul, and embarks on a hot affair with the director, who's black, 20 years her senior and dating Muley's mother. Wes is exposed for fabricating his stories on race, and Jill heads off to Vassar, where she becomes involved with the local Miscellany News and rekindles contact with her grandmother. An eloquent final chapter, "Kaddish," takes place at the time of the Challenger liftoff and the passing of Halley's Comet, when Muley's producer father is gunned down in his studio. Though overflowing with plot lines and detail, Langer's latest is another fine portrait of an era, a city and its very human inhabitants.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594482187
• ISBN-13: 978-1594482182
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,221,732 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Kirkus Reviews, August 26, 2005

By 

Dane Schulman "Dane Schulman" (Cisco, UT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Washington Story (Hardcover)

The kids who filled the pages of Langer's debut, Crossing California (2004), with their passions, idiocies and dreams are leaving high school and stepping into the world. This second installment of their story is set during the Reagan years (1982-87). While the Iran hostage crisis served as a touchstone in Crossing California, here it's the election of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington. The style is still obsessively catalog-like, page after page laying out the Chicago terrain in exhaustive detail. You could practically draw a map of the city after reading this book, not to mention know what movies were showing at the time and what music was on the radio (on what stations, even). As in Crossing California, Langer appends a glossary of terms relevant to the time period. ("Genug," by the way, is Yiddish for "enough," and "Garfield," if you don't already know, is a "cartoon cat created by Jim Davis; ubiquitous in college dorm rooms circa 1984.") Characters, of course, are what matter here most. The battling Wasserstrom sisters, Michelle and Jill, have left Chicago for NYU and Vassar, to work toward careers in acting and politics, respectively, and the quiet genius Muley Willis (the true hero of both books) attends art school in Chicago, where he develops self-destructing art installations. Meanwhile, angry rich kid Wes Sullivan vies with Muley for Jill's affections, and a pair of mismatched impresarios try to kick-start the local film industry, with a disastrous gangster flick, Godfathers of Soul. Although the novel's scope has widened to include Florida, the East Coast and even Germany, the wind-swept streets of Chicago remain at its center. One hopes that a third installment, taking us into the '90s, is not too far off. Another richly detailed and overstuffed novel, both joyful and heartbreaking.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Characters evolve and mature (but not too much) in delightful sequel, November 27, 2006

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Washington Story (Paperback)

Authors who attempt sequels to successful novels risk a series of problems. Quirky or engaging characters lose their edge; intriguing conflicts become banal; what was unique appears repetitive. Happily, Adam Langer's "The Washington Story" avoids these pitfalls and emerges as a thoroughly enjoyable continuation of "Crossing California." The characters have matured (alas, the humor has evolved from prepubescent to collegiate); their conflicts mature them and the author's amazing attention to detail and nuance endures. Throughout the pages of this novel, Langer's love not only for his characters, but the human condition, invests his sequel novel with a dignity and authority cloaked adroitly in humor and satire.

Langer paints "The Washington Story" on a canvas much larger than West Rogers Park, the setting for his debut novel. Two of his adolescent characters are college-bound, and Langer follows them to New York City and Poughkeepsie, yet Chicago remains the northern star in their internal compass. Those who remain in Chicago encounter a city in transition and turmoil, its racial and class tensions bubbling in a cauldron of political change (Harold Washington's election as the first African-American mayor symbolizes the whirlwinds of a new era). Each character has his or her distinct personality; their interplay crackles with energy.

One of the consistent metaphors of the novel is space, which comes to symbolize expansion of personal universes, The mid-1980s were the years of the Challenger space shuttle and the return of Halley's Comet. Sensitive, reclusive and contemplative, Muley Wills determines to convert his dissatisfaction with traditional film into a provocative but evanescent medium. The Wasserstrom sisters, Michelle and Jill, expand their orbits by attending college in New York. The acerbic and frenetic Michelle grabs life by the throat and squeezes unrelentingly. Lacking self-confidence and perpetually second-guessing herself, Jill retains her sense of social conscience while struggling to discover a way to influence the world. Both grapple with the disorienting, befuddling and thrilling possibilities of love.

Adult characters, who had a larger role in "Crossing California," chafe against their limited domains. Frustrated filmmaker Mel Coleman throws himself into a film project and watches with angry disillusion as it is bastardized into a background music video; falling in love with two women doesn't lessen his ever-present insecurities. Carl "Slappit" Silverman, biological father of Muley, faces a mid-life crisis, indicts his spiritual bankruptcy and initiates a quest to alleviate his existential angst. Hapless Charlie Wasserstrom stuns his family and emerges as a literary star.

Even minor characters retain their piquancy. Diedre Wills emerges one of the few well-integrated personalities of the novel; she somehow manages to parent, teach and write, all with an understated seriousness and ethereal calm. Larry Rovner marries, divorces and reinvents himself as a rock star whose rap-like "music" catapults him, unbidden, to national fame. Hyperactive and hypochondriacally challenged Hillel Levy, sadly relinquishes his ubiquitous phallic "mushroom people" drawings and sets out to discern the true meaning of art.

Devotees of Langer's obsession with detail, nuance and language will not be disappointed. Bathroom humor has a collegiate flavor, yet its simplistic, sophomoric quality remains. The author's microscopic attention to detail could serve as a burdensome drag to the narrative, but Langer's focus strengthens rather than weakens. And does he ever love the wonderful beauty of language. "The Washington Story" continues the inclusion of Yiddish in our national letters, and the author's introduction of Kenny Melnick provides Langer a chance to delight his audience with a New Yorker's vernacular.

Adam Langer would be embarrassed if critics were to read too much into his novel, yet "The Washington Story" compels readers to ponder several serious themes. His characters yearn for connection, community and coherence but often encounter chaos, confusion and conflict. Each searches for meaning and purpose, only to be confounded by murky and unpredictable circumstances. Langer trusts that we will discern our own truths in this wonderful stew of politics, art and personal maturation.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Langer must have read my review of "Crossing California"., August 23, 2005

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Jill Meyer (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Washington Story (Hardcover)

When I reviewed "Crossing California" for Amazon, I wrote that, to me, at the end of a great novel, I wanted to call up the author and beg him or her to write more about the same characters. Well, I never actually did call Langer, but he did what I wanted him to do.
He wrote a sequel to "Crossing", and, so far, "The Washington Story" is as great a read as "Crossing".

So, thanks Adam, for continuing the story. Can we dare hope for a trilogy?