Lake City, Thomas Kohnstamm, Counterpoint, 2019, 304 pp
So, we've had Occupy Wall Street, the election of Trump, Hillbilly Elegy, etc. Now we are starting to get the novels about economic inequality, its causes and outcomes. Last year was Jonathan Evison's excellent Lawn Boy (just out in paperback) as an example.
Thomas Kohnstamm is a buddy of Jonathan Evison's. His debut novel, Lake City, is set in Evison's stomping grounds of the Northwest and its anti-hero Lane is another loser white guy who is doing his best to rise out of his impoverished Lake City neighborhood in northeast Seattle.
Lane has plenty of ambition. He has learned how to game the system. By the edge of his fingernails he has scrabbled his way into a college education, even a PhD program at Columbia in New York City
He also has goals: to get into a secure position in a well funded NGO and help the world, giving more opportunities to people like himself. However, his rich wife, currently funding his graduate studies, seems to have left him. Now he is back home, sleeping in his mother's garage and trying to hold things together.
The novel is one of those sad but funny, heartbreaking but savvy stories about social divides. I would say the author nails it pretty well. At times, it felt like he couldn't decide whether he was writing a literary novel or a gritty send up, a redemption story or a slap stick satire.
By the end I concluded he had done all of the above, resulting in some uncomfortable moments for the reader. Still I was impressed by the urgency of his plotting and found Lake City hard to put down.
The novel was the January 2019 selection of The Nervous Breakdown subscription book club. Thomas Kohnstamm's interview on the Otherppl podcast includes hair raising stories of his days as a travel writer and his years spent writing his first novel.
People who have fallen on hard times can make for effective literacy characters and drive quality stories. Folks who almost made it bit have fallen back often adds to the interest. Lane sounds like some people who I have known in real life.
ReplyDeleteI can't agree with you more, Brian.
DeleteSounds like a worthy read! Thanks for sharing this novel with your readers.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Lisa.
DeleteThe author is new to me but his book certainly sounds like worth getting to know.
ReplyDeleteThat Nervous Breakdown subscription sure does bring me books I might otherwise not have heard about.
DeleteI once lived in the neighborhood next door to Lake City called Lake Forest Park. Right there along Lake Washington. Does Lane make it out of his mother's garage? I have not heard of this book, thx for the word on it.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you know? I will just say that Lane has a change of heart.
DeleteI always find it interesting how events of the day - and especially the cultural 'tone' - make it into the literature that follows on from it.
ReplyDeleteI know! And the literature is so much more entertaining than the news.
DeleteNever heard of this author but it sounds like a very interesting read!
ReplyDeleteI do like reading and blogging about authors no one has heard about!
Delete"At times, it felt like he couldn't decide whether he was writing a literary novel or a gritty send up, a redemption story or a slap stick satire." Perhaps he was trying all those things at the same time, to be subversive without appearing to be so.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, though I think it was in part due to debut novel syndrome.
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