The One Inside

January 23, 2017
In the longest work of fiction to date from the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, an aged actor moves through his fragmented memories of his father, the young girl who loved him, and the vast American landscape that served as a backdrop to it all. Following a poignant foreword by Patti Smith, each successive chapter of the novel flits among times and forms: there are poetic reminiscences of the actor’s ex-wife, and terse all-dialogue conversations between him and the lover intending to blackmail him. Coloring those dynamics are flashbacks to the actor’s complicated relationship with Felicity, his father’s underage girlfriend, who also comes to take the actor’s virginity. Mixed amongst these grounding story lines are vivid scenes of his father’s death, drug fantasies, and vague meditations on sex and death. The last section of the book concerns Felicity’s disappearance and apparent suicide, an event that deepens and bonds every moment that precedes it. Though some of the writing feels like leftovers from discarded drafts of books and plays, much of the content remains striking and memorable, illustrative of what makes Shepard’s work so arresting on the screen and the page.

The gravelly voice of narrator Bill Pullman sets the mood for this introspective monologue of an aging actor who dreams of his late father and contemplates the women who remain vivid in his memory. Pullman finds the soul of this short novel, pulling out the rhythm of the prose, transforming it to poetry. The language is striking and sparse, reminiscent of theater directions, and highlights the protagonist's tangle of recalled events and truths: his father's affair with a young woman, movie set moments, a marriage gone wrong, the sounds of the desert. Don't expect a straightforward plot--the beauty of this audiobook is in Shepard's words and Pullman's performance. An extra treat for listeners is author-musician Patti Smith's deft reading of her insightful foreword. C.B.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine