March 15, 2024
A father and daughter share an epic bond over anxiety and addiction. Hallberg's 2015 breakthrough, City on Fire, exemplified Tom Wolfe's concept of the billion-footed beast, a social novel that strived to capture the world in its fullness. This disappointing follow-up is similarly bulky and rangy (and very New York) but narrows its focus to two lead characters. In 2011, when most of the novel is set, Ethan Aspern is a recovering addict who's determined to bond with his hyperintelligent 13-year-old daughter, Jolie. But she has her own set of emotional issues, including some ill-advised drinking that leads to a near-miss with a subway train when she hops on the tracks to recover her phone. The novel shifts back and forth in time, chronicling Ethan's unlikely romance with Sarah Kupferberg, Jolie's mother (he's listless, she's an aspiring academic); his fraught relationship with his father, head of a foundering private school; Jolie's budding, sketchy friendship with a young man equally interested in Occupy Wall Street and LSD; and Sarah's parents, judgmental of everybody involved. The core of the novel occurs during a (metaphorically fraught) Thanksgiving weekend, as Ethan attempts to bond with a Jolie who's determined to give everyone the silent treatment; what ensues includes (among other things) accusations of kidnapping, a bad LSD trip, and anaphylactic shock. Hallberg enlivens this setup by playing with form, modeling sections after an old-school mixtape and shuffling perspectives, but his efforts to show how the parent-child bond both persists and disrupts feels stodgy. Fans of Jonathan Franzen will appreciate Hallberg's hyperprecise, socially acute observational skill; readers of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe novels will note a similarly desperate, self-deprecating dad in Ethan. But the resulting novel is too overworked to feel as lively and funny as either of those authors. Whip-smart and ambitious, but tangled in its own web of themes and scenarios.
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March 25, 2024
Hallberg’s meandering latest (after City on Fire) traces the tentative reunion between an estranged father and his teenage daughter. It’s 2011 and Ethan Aspern, a recovering heroin addict who’s been in and out of prison for a series of small-time drug busts, has endured a lifetime of depression. His 13-year-old daughter, Jolie, lives with her mother, Sarah, in Upper Manhattan. When Ethan learns Jolie was nearly hit by a subway train after trying to recover her dropped phone from the tracks, he senses she’s having problems of her own and vows to help set her straight. Long flashbacks elaborate on Ethan’s uneven history with Sarah, his descent into addiction, and his winding path toward recovery, hobbled in part by an ingrained sense that he’s not worth saving (“Talk of changed lives had the same effect on Ethan as the shibboleths of AA... which was a kind of gag reflex of solitude, like he was the last person on earth shut out of these simple doctrines of subjection and oneness and love”). A climactic Thanksgiving scene poses the question: might a repentant father and his rebellious daughter save each other? The novel is awash with gritty details and gutting emotional insights, but there’s an overabundance of purple prose and the drawn-out payoff is only semirewarding. This doesn’t quite scale the heights of Hallberg’s breakout. Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb, Gernert Co.
April 1, 2024
After the massive pre-pub buzz, sterling reception, and TV adaptation for Hallberg's doorstopper debut novel, City on Fire (2015), readers will have a certain expectation for his second, and they won't be disappointed. When 13-year-old Jolie drops her phone onto the New York subway tracks and nearly gets run over retrieving it, it's a stupid incident that overly worries her mom, Sarah. But if we back up, she has been lonely and hiding vodka in her violin case. Rewinding the tape again reveals the origin story of the original family risk-taker and friend to controlled substances, Jolie's dad and Sarah's ex, Ethan, currently living sober and monastically in California. Encompassing decades--including Ethan's upbringing in coastal Maryland, the loss of his artist mom, Ethan and Sarah's turn from young lovers to young parents, and reams more--this meta-tale is a conversation between adult Jolie, writing in third person, and Ethan, who occasionally also narrates. The maze would be daunting from above, but Hallberg guides readers through every switchback and secret passage. His mixtape approach becomes an actual mixtape in a closing section, an acid trip chopped into page-length bits titled by songs. The trappings are complex, but at its core, this is a tale of the love that makes a family and how it does so.
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