This Is Between Us

August 19, 2013
This well-written but often frustrating novel chronicles five years in a relationship between an unnamed narrator and his unnamed lover, who are hipsters living in Oregon. Each has a child from a previous relationship. Each works, vaguely and unseriously. And each has a rich history of past lovers who pop into the present tense with regularity (the narrator makes out with an old girlfriend in a bar and semi-stalks others by driving past their houses). The gossamer-thin plot charts the ebb and flow of love, but this is no conventional narrative. Instead, Sampsell frames his book as one long address by the narrator to his lover—one consisting of telling moments and epiphanies rendered in precise, poetic prose, more like a journal or memoir than a novel. In between these, the book ranges from the banally familiar (the egocentric fascination of romantic love, the pangs of disintegration) to the willfully perverse, particularly sexual memories and fantasies both absurd and disturbing (but not particularly erotic). This sad sack of a narrator overshares in the extreme, no doubt in the pursuit of some kind of honesty, but emerges as too thoughtless and even amoral for his musings on love to have much resonance.

October 1, 2013
The literary version of old Polaroids: moments in time that are little more than flashes of a dysfunctional relationship. In his debut novel, writer, bookseller and editor Sampsell (Creamy Bullets, 2008, etc.) strongly mimics his memoir (A Common Pornography, 2010) and short stories with a fragmented, splintered novel about a postmodern relationship. It's all meant to be confessional and honest but comes off just like the experimental hipster lit that it mirrors. The unnamed narrator is a hotel clerk and a divorcee with a preteen son. While still married, he met a woman with a daughter, and that was that. He's a real creep, obsessive about sex, seeking out pornography starring women who look like his partner. And yes, it's still too early to be playing sex games pretending your member is one of the 9/11 airplanes. Not to mention he's the guy who says stupid things like "I wanted to become a room of air for you to breathe in." She, meanwhile, is a depressive with mood swings who's given to doing things like strapping on goggles before smashing up dishes in the kitchen. During the fragment when they're separated, one has to wonder why the hell they would ever come back together. The book's real sin, however, is that it all feels so counterfeit, a fantasy played out in bars and strip clubs. The kids are an afterthought--window dressing for the illusion of domesticity. Every now and then, readers get to meet the partner's brother, Daniel, who's prone to hitting on the narrator and masturbating for his entertainment. It's all very poetic, though, and that's another problem. "You and I found each other and tried to run away from our poisons and sadness," Sampsell writes. "You looked for freedom. I looked for escape. Once a leaver, always a leaver. Sometimes I feel like we're just keeping an eye on each other." An unpleasant, often exasperating melodrama about the great divide between two lovers.

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December 1, 2013

This may be Sampsell's first novel, but he's established himself as a memoirist (A Common Pornography), short story writer (Creamy Bullets), and editor (Portland Noir). This quick read narrates five years of a relationship between an unnamed, middle-aged couple through intimate, heartbreaking vignettes. The characters meet when they are both married to other people yet separated, each parenting a young child. They move in together and share everything from parenthood and bizarre situations in their jobs as librarian and hotel employee to formative childhood memories and traumas. The ups and downs of their domestic situation are never boring. They have run-ins with family members and previous lovers and constantly create new games for each other and their children to play. VERDICT Anyone who has been in a long-term relationship will immediately relate to the alternating feelings of love and alienation that the author describes. Using minimalistic language reminiscent of work by short story writer Raymond Carver, Sampsell succeeds in making the personal universal. The male narrator's tender account of his troubled partner moved this reviewer to tears. Highly recommended.--Kate Gray, Shrewsbury P.L., MA

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