From Publishers Weekly
A man scrutinizes what it means to live and love during a cross-country search for his missing wife in a prickly, penetrating novel by the author of
I Am Not Jackson Pollock. After stopping for gas on his way to his mother-in-law's house, the narrator, Jack, emerges from a convenience store to find that his car and his wife, Anne, are nowhere to be found. After making his way back home, Jack discovers a U.S. map marked with an apparent route; imagining that this will lead him to his wife, he buys another car and sets off. Haskell twists the essential mystery—what happened to Anne?—into a meticulous, probing investigation of one man's desires, fears and coping mechanisms, a tactic that somewhat slows the narrative but results in existential chewiness. As Jack makes his way to Kentucky, Colorado, California, he encounters odd but sympathetic strangers, many of whom are likewise journeying, most of whom aid him and some of whom seem like reflections of himself. The cool, intentionally deadened prose can make for difficult reading; that Haskell turns the notion of the unreliable narrator on its head not once but twice will redeem everything for some readers and make others feel tricked. Chapters named for the seven deadly sins (in Latin) signal Jack's path through pride and sloth, through a world that feels both banally familiar and utterly alien—an American purgatory—in this strange and compelling novel.
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From Booklist
A man's life changes forever when he walks out of a gas station and into a convenience store. His waiting wife has vanished, and the narrator's life takes on a new quest--to find her.^B So begins Haskell's first novel, and the nameless narrator begins a winding journey in search of his lost wife and for his former life. From a leafy block in Brooklyn to the beaches of Southern California, he searches desperately, and his journey is both heroic and heartbreaking. His peregrinations are linked to the seven deadly sins, and he encounters a strange cast of characters until he arrives, brokenhearted and broke, on the beaches of San Diego. What he discovers along the way is that memory is often selective and revelatory, that strangers are not always kind (but they often are), and that life-changing experiences (good and bad) can be just around the corner. Haskell's short story collection
I Am Not Jackson Pollack (2003)^B received praise, and his first novel is equally laudable.
Michael SpinellaCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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