Lake City

October 15, 2018
Kohnstamm’s fiction debut (after memoir Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?) is all at once hip, intrepid, and philosophical. Lane Beuche worked his way out of the low-income status of his childhood in Seattle’s bleak Lake City neighborhood to attend college, backsliding once and almost ending his academic endeavors. But then he meets Mia, who has trust fund wealth, and soon after, Lane and Mia are married and living in New York City as Lane pursues his PhD at Columbia. His downward spiral begins when the marriage hits a rough spot after the 9/11 attacks, and Lane returns to his mother’s home in Lake City. He obsesses about returning to his wife and life in New York while he tries to endure the emotionally draining environment of his youth that can be “like a soft choke by someone with bad taste and sweaty palms.” Adrift, he makes an ill-advised decision to help a rich, type-A personality woman and her spouse adopt a baby from a drug-addicted local, and the simultaneously impulsive and irresolute Lane becomes entangled in the drama. Kohnstamm’s fresh voice has a millennial groove, the story is engaging and gritty, and there’s an impressive scrutiny of personal and societal ethics.

November 1, 2018
Lane was sure he had escaped Lake City for good. But suddenly he's back slicing meat at a discount deli counter and grubbing his mom's boyfriend's beers. This calls for extreme measures.Lake City is a neighborhood on the fringes of Seattle: "the mistress that grown-up Seattle kept around from its younger, untamed years. The one with electric blue eyeliner and a missing incisor," "the leaky, yellowed fridge in a remodeled kitchen of granite countertops and fresh stainless steel appliances." In other words, the part of town left behind by the Microsoft/Amazon/Starbucks explosion. After landing a wealthy girlfriend at the University of Washington, Lane was able to leave his trashy roots behind and reinvent himself as a married Columbia grad student in New York City. But shortly after 9/11, the dream is over--Lane's wife, Mia, has been supporting the couple and paying Lane's tuition with her family's money, but now her father is instructing her to dump Lane and cut off funds. Lane finds himself back home at Christmastime, sleeping in his mom's TV room, driving her car, working at the local Fred Meyer discount store, trying desperately to avoid being reabsorbed into the loser lifestyle of the drug- and booze-addled locals he grew up with. In a frantic bid to make enough cash to get back to New York and reclaim his beautiful life, he gets involved in a creepy scheme a wannabe adoptive couple has cooked up to sabotage their little boy's birth mother so they will be awarded permanent custody. Kohnstamm (Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, 2008) stirred up a hullaballoo with his Hunter S. Thompson-style exposé/memoir of the travel-guide industry; a cynical worldview and gonzo aesthetic remain in play here. His delusional, narcissistic antihero and unsympathetic supporting characters--some dangerously close to offensive stereotypes--don't catch many breaks as they ricochet from one nasty situation to the next, with cheap beer, repellent food (beware a riff on the composition of deli turkey), illegal drugs, and other local specialties never far from hand.Amusing as snarky social commentary on the world of Seattle have-nots.

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