Waterloo: A Novel [Hardcover]

Karen Olsson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 22, 2005

"You're in a slump."

Nick Lasseter's boss is talking about his job performance as a reporter for the Waterloo Weekly--but he might as well be talking about Nick's whole life. His current assignment, a profile of a legendary, liberal ex-congressman, is in trouble even before his subject abruptly dies. His sexy girlfriend has spurned him in favor of a muffin magnate. His uncle, a booze-fueled political operative, has decided to crash on Nick's couch after being thrown out of his own house. And Nick's best friends and ex-bandmates seem to spend more and more of their time at the local bar, hazily lamenting a lost golden age of high ideals and low cover charges that suspiciously coincides with their own rapidly-disappearing youth.

When Nick grudgingly agrees to write a piece about a rising female Republican legislator, he stumbles onto a political fight in which the good guys and bad guys start to seem interchangeable. And not even the deceased can be relied on to stick to their stories when Nick gets involved with the late congressman's confidante, a young woman who has her own hidden ties to the town's history. As they search the dim depths of a civic past that's anything but dead and buried, they find that some things never change--things like the moral ambiguity of practical politics and the sad, hilarious cluelessness of young men in love.

Bittersweet and biting, elegiac and sharply observed, Waterloo is a portrait of a generation in search of itself--and a love letter to the slackers, rockers, hustlers, hacks, and hangers-on who populate Austin, Texas--from a formidable new intelligence in American fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Olsson's intricate, ambitious debut novel, the titular setting, an undisguised Austin, Tex., figures just as vividly as her sympathetic slacker protagonist, Nick Lasseter. A news and politics reporter, Nick, at 32 years old, suffers a faded sense of purpose. He's hung up on his ex-girlfriend, Liza, who just got engaged to her now wealthy childhood friend, Miles. The Sunset, Nick's favorite dive bar, is closing down, another sad sign of the times since the tech boom altered the city's landscape. Jaded by political rhetoric, Nick is tired of his beat, and his editor at the Waterloo Weekly warns him he's underperforming. But Nick is assigned to profile Beverly Flintic, a newly elected Republican state legislator, whose story the narrative follows alongside Nick's. Beverly, a middle-aged married woman, is having an affair with beefcake gubernatorial candidate Mark Hardaway. She's also embroiled in an urban planning scheme, a boondoggle Nick's alcoholic uncle Bones tips him off to. This story, along with a growing romantic interest in fellow reporter Andrea Carter, might be the key to restarting Nick's engine. With clean, brisk prose, Olsson brings a specific, authentic sense of character, time and place to this story of Texas politicians and muckrakers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

This wry love letter to Austin (formerly Waterloo), Texas, is steeped in nostalgia for the halcyon years of the late 1970s, when the music was fine, the beer was free, and the city seemed awash in addled good humor. This yearning for the glory days, however, has had a paralyzing effect on Nick Lasseter, erstwhile political reporter. Laid low by the recent engagement of his ex-girlfriend to a muffin magnate and enervated by the empty rhetoric of the politicians he covers, Nick feels as though his life lacks a certain gravitas. Meanwhile, his uncle, an old-school politician who feels increasingly out of touch with the new order ("Problem is, there aren't enough drunks left in politics. There's no more spirit of conviviality"), puts Nick onto a story about a freshman assemblywoman. What saves Nick from his lassitude, however, is a new girlfriend and his old band mates, who know a thing or two about conviviality. In her first novel, reminiscent of the early work of Nick Hornby, Olsson displays an enviably light touch and a deep affection for her hometown. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition. states edition (September 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374286264
• ISBN-13: 978-0374286262
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,395,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The builders of the Tower of Babel might have avoided catastrophe if they hired the right architects.", October 9, 2005

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Waterloo: A Novel (Hardcover)

While Nick Lasseter is nursing a broken heart and worried about losing a very mediocre position at The Waterloo Weekly, Beverly Flintic, a newly elected state assemblywoman, is receiving daily visits from lobbyist Kenneth (Bones) Lasseter and meeting gubernatorial candidate Mark Hardaway in distant motels for a few hours. Neither Nick nor Beverly are especially tuned into local politics, both struggling to stay afloat, minor fish in a bay full of sharks in Waterloo, Texas, a thinly disguised Austin. That the inefficient Hardaway, a man of few subtleties, could reach the office of governor says more about his high-powered friends than any assumed political acumen. Beverly's affair with Mark has compromised her effectiveness in her reapportioned district; she has recently put forth a bill for neighborhood gentrification that has hidden clauses affecting the homeowners' right of imminent domain.

Andrea Carter, of The Standard American, meets Nick at a funeral for a public figure, William Stanley Sabert. Apparently Kenneth Lasseter is already known to Andrea, whose deceased father worked with Sabert. Writing an article on the Jim Crow library that is about to be demolished for city renovation, Andrea has done an interview with Sabert; hence her presence at the funeral, the only dark face in the crowd. Nick is attracted to Andrea but is distracted by a scheduled interview with Beverly Flintic, although he has no background information on which to base his questions. That changes when Bones Lasseter gives his nephew a sheaf of papers concerning the bill Flintic has sponsored. Republican Flintic is somewhat concerned about the bill and its furthering of privatization of government agenda, but has been assured that all is in order.

Beverly is well-meaning and over-worked, trying to resolve family issues while representing a constituency that demands more from her than the usual sellout. Bit by bit, moving through a gridlocked urban sprawl, Olsson's protagonists awaken to their mutual concerns. Even, Bones, the crusty Democratic lobbyist, can read the writing on the wall: "It seems like it's all or nothing. There's no more spirit of conviviality." The nostalgic ramblings of these likeable characters reveal a city of conflicts, compromises and the simple urge to succeed in life; these flawed citizens are just like working people anywhere. On the other hand, the grim reality of a shifting economy doesn't slip Olsson's attention, or how easily the important things slip our attention.

Couched in everyday amiability, this novel could be Anywhere, USA, the scene of the privatization of human services, the massive fortunes made by committees who sponsor both litigation and public servants, spreading their greed to special interests. The bottom line: in business, anyone and anything can be bought and repackaged for public consumption. Sound familiar? It should. This process has been repeating itself all over America, the poor disenfranchised by redevelopment projects, their voices silenced by the roar of cash machines, extinct as the trees removed to make way for luxury townhouses. Waterloo is peopled with folks we all know, doing their jobs, surviving day by day with a secret hope of getting ahead somewhere along the line. And here are the smooth-talkers, the political aficionados and their behind-the-scenes bankers, chipping away, with more for the few and less for the many. The unseasoned reporters, one a borderline slacker and the assemblywoman who worries about her family, make this a very human story, a fictionalized city in Texas caught in the politics of the new millennium. Luan Gaines/ 2005.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What Not to Write, January 4, 2007

By 

S. Coldsmith "Mayflower Child" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Waterloo: A Novel (Paperback)

I'm this novel's ideal demographic: I've lived in Austin for three decades; I love and hate the place; I have a degree from UT; and I'm certainly a card-carrying liberal, one who has even subscribed to The Nation (to which the author has contributed). But I loathed this book. Not because it wasn't true to "my" city, but because its author thought she had to write Art instead of telling a story. By page 90, I was wondering if the story would ever begin -- or if I'd ever find anything to admire in the person who, I surmised after many choppy chapters, was the main character. But there was nothing to admire or to even vaguely like in the struggling Austin Chronicle journalist who is the protagonist. I did make it to the end of the book, because of the odd moment of funny truthfulness or because some vivid detail was keenly rendered. For that, I give the novel one star.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-Read Debut of the Fall Season, November 22, 2005

By 

S. K. Walsh "Contemporary Reader" (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Waterloo: A Novel (Hardcover)

Olsson has written a witty, sophisticated novel that promises to entertain native Austinites as well as readers outside the boundaries of Texas' familiar capital. Beyond delving into the political nuances of state politics, Olsson possesses a sharp eye for affairs of the human heart. Her scenes and dialogue between her characters resonate with truth, and often with smirks and laughter... whether it's between Nick Lasseter, the half-hearted, left-leaning journalist, and his inebriated Uncle Bones, a washed-up lobbyist... or a brief exchange between assemblywoman Beverly Flintic and a grocery store cashier. Also, it's not any debut novelist who can seamlessly shift between characters' points of view as well as moments in time. Olsson makes something seem easy, which isn't easy at all. Enjoy!