Synopses & Reviews
Weakness has always been a concern for William Miller: growing up vegetarian in a family of bodybuilders will do that to a person. But William is further weakened by the death of his mother, the arrival of a new step-mother, and his irrepressible crush on his new step-sister, Lulu. As Lulu faces down her own challenges, William watches his life shift into tumult and despair. Once Lulu departs for college, Will goes into the world to find himself discovering Western philosophy, a cruel dating world, enduring friendship, and, ultimately, his true calling. Emboldened by his turn as a late-night radio personality, Will rescues himself from the self-image of weakness he'd long wished to escape. This debut novel explores the fundamental difference between where we come from and the endless possibilities of where we may go.
Review
"Most novels in which a boy must oil up his bodybuilder father for competition would merit our attention, but that detail is just one of many amazements on offer in All About Lulu. Will the Thrill is a great literary charmer, and through his rich voice Jonathan Evison has concocted a funny and painfully honest piece of fiction." Sam Lipsyte, author of Homeland
Review
"All About Lulu is an exhilarating, wholly original and brave novel about obsession, love and becoming. With Will Miller, Evison has created a thoroughly modern protagonist steeped in Dickensian complexity, pure yet conflicted, lost yet driven to find truth in the dysfunctional American abyss." James P. Othmer, author of The Futurist
Review
"Jonathan Evison is a killer talent, and All About Lulu is the kind of novel readers have been hungry for: Funny, smart, entertaining an all around delight. Literary fiction needs more books like this; maybe then people would stop talking about the Death of the Novel and just read and enjoy themselves." Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng
Review
"All about Lulu reads like Salinger for the Freaks and Geeks-meets-Wes Anderson crowd, a whip smart Gen X Lolita (sans pedophilia). While Evison lacks Nabokov's smugly elegant wordplay, he nonetheless packs this novel with candid observations and lucid deconstructions of the nature of obsession. Evison's gift for simile is superb, littering the novel with the detritus of his impish wit." Gerry Donaghy, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopsis
Weakness has always been a concern for William Miller, but he is further weakened by his irrepressible crush on his new step-sister, Lulu. Once Lulu departs for college, Will attempts to find himself--discovering Western philosophy, a cruel dating world, and, ultimately, his true calling.
About the Author
Jonathan Evison likes rabbits. His work had appeared in the Portland Review, Orchid, Knock, Opium, Quick Fiction, and other journals. All About Lulu is his first novel. He has worked as a syndicated talk radio host, a rotten tomato sorter, a telemarketer, and a script doctor. He is the founder and moderator of the FICTION FILES, a forum for literary discussion.