Still alive A novel

LJ Pemberton

Book - 2024

"A hero's journey through a dying empire. On the Road for a beaten generation. After V meets Lex, a butch painter, at an underground punk show, they enter a multi-year relationship that ranges from Portland, Oregon, to New York City, and finally Los Angeles, with V's family of origin ever interjecting with dysfunction and neediness. Her brother has retreated into a hodgepodge of Eastern religiosity and their mother's addictions are worsening. Meanwhile her father is busy building a new family, as sunny as V's childhood was grim. Leroy, V's gay best friend, has chosen rural peace, but V can't find the same satisfaction -- anywhere. Ever in search of love, meaning, and temp work, V hurtles across the US, res...isting the store-bought narratives of mainstream life to create a freedom all her own. With heady pacing, a recursive structure, and sharp prose, Still Alive renders the much-maligned adult millennial experience with affection and profundity. In this story, as in life, there's no cure for living." --

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Subjects
Genres
Lesbian fiction
Queer fiction
Novels
Romans lesbiens
Romans
Published
[Place of publication not identified] : Malarkey Books [2024]
Language
English
Main Author
LJ Pemberton (author)
Physical Description
280 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9798987465448
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

A peripatetic and promiscuous young woman seeks her life's meaning in the fresh and vivid debut from Pemberton, a PW contributor. The recursive story is framed by a formative event in narrator V's life. At age seven in 1989 "pre-hip" Portland, Ore., she witnessed the aftermath of a grisly car accident on her front lawn. After hearing the noise, she rushes out of the house with her parents and older brother. One of the motorists is decapitated, and V takes particular interest in the man's severed head bleeding on their grass. Each chapter revisits the scene of the accident with other stories of her troubled childhood, such as her ill-matched parents' infidelity and her older brother's racism. Her college friend Leroy provides a sympathetic ear as V gets her heart broken by her girlfriend, Lex, then takes lovers of various genders and moves to New York City. She makes for a spiky yet companionable narrator as she negotiates the crummy job market of the aughts with various temp jobs ("I worked a bunch and ignored the boomer insistence that from this hodge-podge I could somehow make a career") and continues holding a candle for Lex. Throughout, V's desire is made palpable via Pemberton's aching prose ("we danced... like we could make the known new with our lust"). It's a piquant coming-of-age novel for late-blooming romantics. (Feb.)

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