All about Lulu

If the son of Jorel had gone through what the main character, Will Miller had gone through, the future man of steel would have been so broken spiritually enough to timidly offer to do more than kneel before Zod. I consumed this book like Eugene's Heavenly Hot Dog with relish. I vote we go to the Westminster Abbey and dig up Charles Dicken's corpse, prop what left of him on the gravestone, and politely inform him that we have moved on to another masterpiece of literature, ALL ABOUT LULU by Jonathan Evison.

This is what Wally Lamb wanted to do with his novel "She's Come Undone" (1992)--write a bildungsroman about a sympathetic loser with a crazy family and a unique voice whose story, set over a span of decades, offers a glimpse of America's recent past. The difference is, Lamb almost pulled it off with a really good book. Evison not only pulls it off, but hits it out of the park with a great book--part "Catcher in the Rye," part "Lolita," part "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." William Miller, his protagonist, is a wimpy vegetarian in a family of hulking, meat-eating bodybuilders. His step-sister, Lulu, is his lone comrade, and soon becomes the love of Will's life, the center of everything for him. Much of the novel dwells on what happens when his center abruptly abandons him, leaving him with a gaping hole to fill with something--Fatburgers, radio, Hot Dog Heaven, disastrous would-be one-night stands, even Kierkegaard. This idea of emptiness permeates the novel. " 'I feel like a bagel,' " one of Will's former teachers confides to him. " 'Like there's a hole in the center of me.' " Will's narrated response is succinct: "I lived that feeling for most of my life, but I didn't say so. There were times when I felt like the hole and not the bagel, but I didn't tell him that either." Serious stuff, true. But rather than devolve into a whining diatribe, like a third-rate Holden Caulfield, "All About Lulu" is both very funny and very honest. Evison takes William, an outcast within his own family, and reveals him with all his flaws and pettiness as well as with his capacity to love and grow and learn. Nicely tied-up happy endings aren't plentiful in this novel. "No pain, no gain" is the Miller family motto, and William faces plenty of pain and loss, but all against a hazy background of hope against all odds. While William is by far the most engaging character, the supporting cast is solid--Big Bill, William's bodybuilding father; Eugene Gobernecki, ex-Soviet emigre and fierce capitalist; Troy, William's best friend and romantic rival; and, of course, Lulu, who is both stepsister and siren to William and is wisely kept off-stage for much of the novel by Evison. Her appearances are startling and convincing, and even when she is gone, Will--and by extension, the reader--basks in her afterglow. Along the way Will shows us life in America from the '60s to the '90s, from the Summer of Love to the Reagan Revolution and the grunge movement in Seattle. There's even a hilarious cameo appearance by a certain former bodybuilder turned movie star. For everyone who's had to suffer unrequited or even semi-requited love, and that covers most people on the planet, "All About Lulu" is a must.

This novel came at me unexpected. When I first ordered the book, I really didn't think it was going to deliver quite what it did. The whole thing is about this kid, William, who falls in love with his stepsister, Lulu, and for a time she loves him back. But at 15 she goes away for a summer and when she returns, it's all over. She retreats from him - from everything, really - and he's left to obsess from a distance, not knowing exactly what drove the wedge between them. What really surprised me were the characters. The body-builder dad, the low-brow twins, the post-hippie stepmom, the daft rich boy, the Soviet apartment manager... There's a lot of cliches they could fall into, and they do at first because we always see people as cliches of themselves when we first meet them (or at least caricatures), but then they emerge as people. Or, we slowly get to discover them. It wasn't all laid out from the beginning; we had to get to know them. Evison did a great job pacing the characters and knew the right details to let us in on their lives. Overall I really enjoyed this book. The ending delivered and it was a great journey getting there.

The angst from adapting to undesired situations is leveled by a cool confidence and a velvety smooth voice that projects itself from the main character, Will. Through passion, in a land of deserts, foot lockers, muscles, meat and dinosaurs, Will finds understanding and compassion to life's unanswered questions.

What a pleasure to dive into Jonathan Evison's beautifully written and artfully crafted tale of love, loss, and growing up. Will Miller, the lone scrawny runt in a family of bodybuilders, falls hopelessly in love with his new stepsister, Lulu. Sensitive as a poet, Will records his love-sick thoughts in an ever-growing stack of journals, documenting the risky, painful business of opening his heart to another. Both witty and wise, Evison takes a reader through the anguish and heartbreak that is the hallmark of the coming of age novel without once slipping into sentimentality.