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by Barbara Hoffert?
Opening this "last unpublished novel" of Brautigan, as it is billed, the reviewer panics: will this be another of those unedited messes drug out so that we can enjoy a bit of nostalgia? But no, after the wistful letter to a dead friend ("an unfortunate woman") that affectingly opens the book, the first few lines of text proper deliver an image — small, ordinary, but astounding — of a woman's shoe lying in an intersection "sparkl[ing] like a leather diamond." The page reverberates, and we know that we are in the hands of a writer who earned his cult status. The other shoe doesn't drop for a while, and in the meantime we are treated to a freefall monolog as the narrator of this semiautobiographical tale wanders from Canada to Hawaii to Alaska, reminiscing, collecting images, and reflecting on his friend's suicide (which obviously presaged his own). A little loose-jointed, this is still wonderful writing. For all collections of contemporary literature.
Library Journal
July 2000: 90
[Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/00.]
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