Letting Loose

It's a rarity in my opinion for an experienced American writer in mid-career to disburden him or herself with the grand intent of penning the next Great American Novel. In Christopher T. Leland's Letting Loose however, that's exactly what happens, but purposefully, for the high-minded ideal of penning a leg of American History under the terms and guidelines of the next Great Human Novel. With a backdrop and range that sweeps over so many monumental moments in contemporary American History, Mr. Leland unfolds this story methodically. He bends some characters as they travel through and breaks others all to pieces, but in each case, they all must come to terms with the humilities, humors, and horrors of what it means to be human. Even in the minor characters, we find stories of great interest and weight. The sheer beauty of the writing becomes at times, starkly contrasted by what it is that's being described. From Boom Boom Bars in the swelter of Vietnam to the subtle anxiousness of cruising Christopher Street in the Village, the most wonderful allure of otherworldliness sets in through the writing-- an ethereal and alarming sensation. More than anything though, softness and connections come through the story, a simple tale really- the need for closure of so many open wounds: open American wounds, open human wounds. Two sons heading in vastly different directions and the connections they make through life and in death, connections that further ramify and ripple, tripping little switches in others. This book is crowded thick with the weight of what it means to try to connect with people, and what comes of disconnection from them as well. Christopher T. Leland's Letting Loose reminds us of things we forgot to put away, people we have not called in years-- but should, and secret, little things long since buried in the backyards of our first childhood homes. Through the course of revisiting some sixty years of defining events in the American Experience, the novel links us with its characters, with our own pasts; it reveals the contrasted human qualities of the ineffable compassion and the incomprehensible coldness of which we are all capable.