Transcription

In the beautiful and resonant latest from Lerner (The Topeka School), a middle-aged man constructs an elaborate farewell to his mentor. In the first of three sections, the unnamed narrator travels to Providence, R.I., to interview 90-year-old artist Thomas for a magazine article. The narrator plans to record their conversation on his iPhone, which he accidentally breaks just before the appointment. Unable to admit the problem to Thomas, he proceeds with the interview, and Thomas embarks on his characteristically stunning soliloquies on art, light, and sound (“There is always music playing that we cannot hear.... We are deaf to the bats singing in ultrasound, or the elephants conversing in their infrasound.... The air is alive with messages”). In the second section, set after Thomas’s death, the narrator travels to Madrid for a symposium on Thomas’s work, where he’s questioned after revealing that he had drawn some of the now published interview with Thomas from memory. (Lerner suggests follow-up interviews took place and were recorded.) The novel concludes with a dialogue between the narrator and Thomas’s son, Max. The pair, who have been friends since college, grapple with their complex relationships with Thomas (“Maybe you were the real son, maybe I was the clone or robot or doppelgänger,” Max tells the narrator), and new mysteries arise over the course of their conversation. Lerner’s lyrical narrative brims with insights into how memories take and change shape, the nature of father figures, and the ways an artist’s influence echoes through time. It’s a knockout. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (Apr.)