{"id":997,"date":"2018-12-31T15:09:28","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=997"},"modified":"2018-12-31T15:09:28","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:09:28","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=997","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

LITERARY FICTION<\/p>\n

Brian McGreevy<\/span><\/p>\n

The Lights: A Novel<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Rare Bird Books (A Barnacle Book)<\/p>\n

Paperback, 978-1-9455-7212-8, (also available as an e-book), 216 pgs., $16.95<\/p>\n

May 9, 2017<\/p>\n

Leda and Mark relocate from New York City to a gentrifying East Austin<\/span> when Leda receives her Hogwarts letter. In this instance, \u201cHogwarts\u201d refers to the Michener Center for Writers (MCW), the prestigious graduate program in creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n

Physical and emotional dislocation, combined with the fierce and paranoid competition among her fellow writers, bring out the worst in Leda, an academic overachiever (\u201cLisa Simpson\u2013ing\u201d) and insecure twenty-something who drinks too much and believes in portents. Leda falls in with fellow students and best friends Harry and Jason (\u201cimaginary Norman Mailers and George Plimptons toasting their defiant political incorrectness\u201d), forming a dysfunctional threesome. As Leda and Harry compete for influence over Jason, we come to understand Leda is a predator who preys mostly upon herself.<\/p>\n

The Lights: A Novel<\/span><\/a><\/span> is the second novel from Brian McGreevy<\/span>. Himself a Michener fellow, McGreevy is also cocreator of The Son,<\/span> a recent television adaptation of Philipp Meyer\u2019s<\/span> novel of the same title for AMC, starring Pierce Brosnan.<\/span> The Lights<\/span> is highly entertaining literary fiction, excelling at sleight of hand with arch humor and misdirection.<\/p>\n

The Lights<\/span> is structurally inventive and creatively designed, written in the form of a letter (\u201cIt is at this point that this epistle must make an unforgivable turn for the Dickensian\u201d), the kind you write for \u201cthe benevolent cult\u201d of Alcoholic Anonymous to make amends to those you\u2019ve wronged, complete with italics, ALL CAPS, and a stray footnote. The kitschy cover has a kind of Valley of the Dolls\u2013meets-1930s private-eye-pulp-fiction vibe going on.<\/p>\n

Austin, where the cicadas create a \u201cwall of sound,\u201d and \u201ca high degree of intelligence and planlessness were virtually prerequisites for residence,\u201d is a character unto itself in McGreevy\u2019s novel. He pays homage to the city and writing center he loves, while simultaneously poking good-humored fun at cultural pretensions; \u201cWell, Terry\u201d is a running joke throughout.<\/p>\n

McGreevy\u2019s other characters are hard to like, except for poor Mark, who doesn\u2019t have enough personality to qualify as a character. Just as impatience with Leda\u2019s superficial first-person narrative sets in, and you begin to wonder why anyone desires this woman\u2019s company, much less loves her, McGreevy dives into her backstory, creating a complex, sympathetic psychological portrait of a damaged daughter who learned by example: a mother\u2019s betrayal and a childhood gone badly wrong have created a \u201cmanipulator addict by-product of a manipulator addict.\u201d You\u2019d drink, too.<\/p>\n

The jealousy and paranoid competition between the grad students are redolent of junior high, the dialogue reminiscent of Gilmore Girls,<\/span> if they were mean.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of me is still trying to win a philosophical argument,\u201d says Jason the screenwriter, lamenting Hollywood\u2019s lowest common denominator. \u201cFuck philosophy, what am I, a playwright?\u201d<\/p>\n

This combination dangerously approaches caricature early in the novel, but then the almost-farce turns itself inside-out, clich\u00e9s become people who earn a reluctant affection, and The Lights approaches Merritt Tierce\u2019s<\/span> Love Me Back,<\/span> and becomes something approaching profound.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, and The Collagist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}