Lonesome Lies Before Us

May 8, 2017
Lee’s well-written but uninspiring fifth book (after The Collective) follows Yadin Park and Jeanette Matsuda, residents of Rosarita Bay, Calif., as they enter middle age. Yadin, retired from a career as an alt-country singer/songwriter, installs carpet for a living. His girlfriend, Jeanette, who once dreamed of becoming a documentary photographer, cleans rooms at a fancy resort,. Yadin’s secret desire to make one more album threatens their relationship, as do his medical and financial woes, Jeanette’s coolness toward him, their lingering feelings for former lovers, and the municipal and state politics that disrupt their community. Lee depicts his characters with an impressive commitment to detail and backstory. He renders their workdays with long sections full of vivid minutiae and reveals their pasts a little at a time, demonstrating how their families, obsessions, and tragedies have influenced their worldviews. Lee writes with stirring eloquence about the regret and longing both characters struggle to master. In too many places, however, the prose descends into knotted, passive phrasings; the use of detail at times suffocates; and brand names disrupt the flow. When Jeanette fears that Yadin is cheating on her with another woman, for instance, she wonders: “Was he... naked on the Rivolta Carmignani sheets, rutting into her on the Sealy Posturepedic Plush?” The plot builds to a dramatic climax that it then declines to deliver. The unsatisfying ending and awkward writing ultimately undo the initial promise of the novel’s compelling protagonists.

April 1, 2017
A down-on-his-luck alt-country singer gets another shot at stardom--if he really wants it.Lee's (The Collective, 2012, etc.) evocative descriptions of the inner lives of ordinary men and women are subtly devastating. Here he returns to his fictional hamlet of Rosarita Bay, a sleepy beach town in California loosely modeled on Half Moon Bay. This is the story of a country singer who can't quite get his blues out from under his skin. Yadin Park was once a well-respected singer/songwriter who, after suffering bankruptcy and being diagnosed with a disease crippling his hearing, has been reduced to working as a carpet installer. He's also in a half-hearted relationship with his boss's daughter, Jeanette Matsuda. But as happens, over the course of a few weeks, everything changes. For Yadin, it's the reappearance of his old flame and singing partner Mallory Wicks, a once-hot Nashville sensation whose star is fading. It's a bit as if Gram Parsons had sobered up and flamed out and Emmylou Harris dropped into town for a visit. Jeanette is a housekeeper at the ritzy resort where Mallory is staying but is also flirting with her pastor on the side. We soon learn that Yadin has secretly been recording a stripped-down album in his den: "Simple, quiet stuff," he tells Mallory. "No frills, just slow, raw songs." That description could just as well apply to Yadin's life, which is upended when Mallory offers to sing backup and land him an album deal, all of which violates his original intentions. "He decided he would record this one last album, while he could still hear," Lee writes. "Not as a comeback, not to try to revive his career, but as a coda, a valediction. A way to leave on his own terms, and say, I was here." It's not high drama, but as a sad, sweet portrait of a couple trying to come to terms with their own imperfections, it's awfully compelling. A forgiving portrayal of the risks inherent in asking what might have been.

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May 1, 2017

Authenticity, failure, art, and identity would be a succinct, thematic description of Lee's oeuvre (e.g., The Collective). Of course, it wouldn't summarize the depth of his work. Here, Lee introduces us to Yadin Park, a failed musician who refused to let a major record label erode the purity of his work and sense of self. Leading a meager existence with his girlfriend Jeanette Matsuda, a housekeeper at a local hotel, Yadin yearns to record one more album before resigning himself to laying carpet for a living in the quiet town of Rosarita Bay, CA. However, a chance encounter with Mallory Wicks, his former bandmate and lost love, reignites his creative passion and simultaneously damages his relationship with Jeanette. As this love triangle unfolds, each character faces his or her own struggle to lead a life of quiet frustration and unrealized dreams. VERDICT With wit and humor, Lee pens a touching meditation on the obstacles, hindrances, and snags one encounters in the pursuit of being an artist. Readers for whom Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia resonated will enjoy Lee's rumination on creative success. [See Prepub Alert, 12/19/16.]--Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Lab., NM

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