Broken People

April 1, 2020
Can a weekend with a shaman help a tortured writer find inner peace? Lansky follows The Gilded Razor (2016), a memoir of his misspent youth, with a work of autofiction that recounts the further adventures of a character named Sam with the same backstory. Neither recovery nor writing a memoir nor a move to Los Angeles has proved to be the key to mental health for Sam, who is so filled with self-doubt and self-loathing he can hardly leave the house or entertain a simple hookup. Fortunately, he somehow manages to attend a dinner party where he overhears someone say "He fixes everything that's wrong with you in three days." His rich friend Buck makes arrangements to take a course with the healer in question and offers to take Sam along. At first, he's doubtful. "Is it problematic to work with a white shaman who's like, appropriating the teachings and practices of an indigenous culture for personal gain?" Sam asks his best friend, Kat. "Definitely," she tells him. "But life is a late-capitalist hellscape, so your mystical journey might as well be one, too." The novel is strongest in its humorous moments. Sam's experience on ayahuasca turns out to involve reliving in detail a series of messy relationships with men he loved in the past, which is not all that interesting, but it culminates in an intense spiritual experience which would be more compelling if Lansky had not chosen to call this a novel. Instead, we have an imaginary person healing imaginary damage with an imaginary drug experience, which seems to be a failure of nerve. To make this type of narrative interesting and meaningful, the psychedelic healing experience should be asserted as fact, as Ayelet Waldman did in A Really Good Day. If it's all made up, who cares? This fervent testimony to the healing powers of ayahuasca would have been more powerful if published as nonfiction.

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April 13, 2020
Lansky follows his addiction memoir The Gilded Razor with a riveting novel about an L.A. writer named Sam who recently published a memoir about his drug and alcohol addiction. Sam, 28, and a friend plan to visit a shaman in Portland, Ore., on the strength of a testimonial that the shaman “fixes everything wrong with you in three days.” With humor, verve, and cut-to-the-bone revelations, Lansky takes readers on an enthralling adventure as Sam reckons with his anxiety and discomfort with his body. Over three days in Portland, thanks to the shaman’s perspicacious insight, drumbeating, chanting, and careful administration of ayahuasca, Sam enters a mode of deep self-reflection. Lansky’s mesmerizing descriptions are unflinchingly raw as Sam examines his life choices, his self-obsession, and his mistreatment of men in his life, particularly Charles, his first real love. Lansky also offers a canny snapshot of modern gay life, with the specter of HIV hovering over intimate relationships. While Sam’s whining about his body occasionally grates, the author keeps the reader on his side with an endless supply of wit. Lansky’s tale of self-acceptance offers surprising depth.

June 1, 2020
Lansky's first book, The Gilded Razor (2016), was the unstintingly honest memoir of his teen years as a drug-using New York City prep school student. His first novel stars writer Sam, a gay man and recovering addict who moves from New York to Los Angeles. Sam overhears talk of a shaman who can fix people, so he and a friend skeptically engage the shaman for a three-day ceremony to remove and heal whatever is causing them pain. Readers gain access to Sam's memories, mostly regarding failed relationships and life in New York, while Sam must reckon with his choices and narratives. Of the book's subjects?materialism, addiction, sex, relationships, body issues, and loneliness?the most compelling is Sam's thoughts and beliefs around HIV, which are surprising, nuanced, and compelling. The shamanistic ritual, which provides the structure for this psychic deep dive, is less so. The novel captures a very now portrait of contemporary privileged gay male life, narrated in an authentic voice and painted in a full, ugly-to-beautiful spectrum.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2020

DEBUT Author of The Gilded Razor, a corrosive memoir of adolescent drug abuse and one-night stands, Time West Coast editor Lansky has written an eyes-wide-open debut novel about a man named Sam who's moved from New York to Los Angeles and is determined to stay sober and mend a life littered with failed relationships and failed dreams. But he still suffers from what he perceptively describes as "that elemental sense of brokenness, of being wrong, of being bad." Then, at yet another fancy party, he hears about the healing promise of an ancient herb called ayahuasca, administered by a shaman over three days, and after some contrary resistance he's eager to try it. Through the visions that follow, we participate in Sam's painful backstory and come to understand what it is he needs to let go. VERDICT Set within the vividly realized framework of addiction recovery and gay life in America, this remains the story of one man's deep personal struggles while at the same time speaking to and for all the broken people in this world. Some readers may twitch at the long drug trip, but it's a deeply felt journey that many will want to take. [See Prepub Alert, 12/1/19.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2020

Following his caustic memoir of addiction, The Gilded Razor, Time magazine's West Coast editor offers a buzzing debut novel about a man named Sam who's struggling to stay sober and mend a life littered with failed relationships and failed dreams. Then he hears about the healing promise of an ancient herb called ayahuasca. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.