Broken Sleep

August 15, 2015
Secret family histories drive this hefty novel encompassing rock music, the art world, leftist politics, the long reach of the Holocaust, and more. The second novel by Bauman (And the Word Was, 2006) turns on three figures with complex pasts. Moses Teumer, a history professor, is seeking a bone-marrow donor to treat his leukemia when he discovers he's the half brother of Alchemy Savant, a Bono-esque rock star with messianic political ambitions; their shared mother is Salome Savant, a celebrated counterculture artist with a history of mental breakdowns. The Pynchon-esque character names provide a hint about the sensibility of the novel, which is rife with clandestine relationships and glimpses into the loopy but earnest LA demimonde of sex, music, and limousine liberals. Under those glitzy surfaces of money and art, Bauman argues, blood connections are more truly influential: Moses must reckon with his discovery that his father is an unrepentant Nazi soldier, while Salome shares the same urge for attention and seclusion that defined her mother, Greta Garbo. At more than 600 pages, the novel is too baggy to sustain its lead characters without contrivance; the closing sections, which move into the near future to describe Alchemy's climb to the political stage, are a speedy but wearying recycling of riffs on media culture, family drama, and American surveillance politics that were already established early on. And the story's tragic climax is less powerful for being revealed early. Bauman does have the virtue of writing well in multiple registers. Salome's perspective is free-wheeling and dreamlike, Moses' sagely, and Alchemy is seen largely via tough-talking band mate Ambitious Mindswallow, who rises from a Queens street kid to member of the world's biggest band. He's a key allegorical figure in Bauman's lament for a lost American dream where once upon a time anything was possible. A big-thinking but overstuffed postmodern epic.

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Starred review from November 15, 2015

Bauman's second novel (after And the Word Was) is a plangent tour de force of epic proportions. Revolving around New York City artist Salome Savant and the web of relationships in her life, the intricate plot unfolds from multiple viewpoints as it shifts back and forth from the late 1950s to the near future, with 20th-century icons from Greta Garbo to Andy Warhol popping up. Moses Teumer's search for a blood donor after a leukemia diagnosis prompts the action. But the narrative is defined by a life-shaking personal discovery involving parentage and betrayal, with the story of Moses's newly discovered half-brother Alchemy, the aptly named rock-star son of Salome, adding a slowly unfolding tragic focus that pushes the novel into an ultimate crescendo. VERDICT The amalgam of distinct perspectives creates an incoherent coherence that challenges and rewards in turn. Both a nightmare and a dream, this work successfully engages with eternal questions of truth and evil to form a solid and captivating literary experience. Highly recommended for large libraries with fiction readers who are concerned with questions of the modern predicament.--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2015
Moses Teumer's discovery that he has leukemia and needs a bone-marrow donor uncovers a bottomless well of family secrets. His real mother is not Hannah, who raised him, but an avant-garde artist, Salome Savant, who has been in and out of mental institutions and believes that Moses was stillborn. Prince of Pop Culture Alchemy Savant, front man for the rock band the Insatiables, is Moses' half brother. And Malcolm, his father, who disappeared years ago, was a Nazi. The layers of deception get more complicated, not only upending personal relationships but threatening to spill over into Alchemy's plan to run for president on a third-party ticket in 2020. There's more, involving spies, government investigations, artificial insemination, Judaism, psychiatry, and Greta Garbo; and Moses, Salome, and Insatiables bassist Ambitious Swallow, among others, all contribute to the nonlinear narrative. There are even, at the end, an Insatiables Discography and a Salome Savant CV. Readers who like their fiction on the wacky side will appreciate the rollicking energy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)