I'll Let You Go: A Novel - Hardcover

Wagner, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375500022 ISBN 13: 9780375500022

Publisher: Villard, 2002

Synopsis

"[Wagner] slices open the self-satisfied bosom of Los Angeles yet again in his third novel, a sprawling family saga that trades the usual mush-mouthed sentimentalities for cascading shards of knife-edged vignettes. A masterful, modern-day fantasy of millionaires and madmen, fathers and sons, reality and dreams."
--Kirkus Reviews

Bruce Wagner’s I’m Losing You was hailed as "outrageous -- dead-on in every way" by Janet Maslin in The New York Times. New York magazine’s Walter Kirn called it "the year’s best book." And John Updike, in The New Yorker, wrote that Bruce Wagner "writes like a wizard." In I’ll Let You Go, Wagner offers a stunning novel that surpasses anything he’s done before.

Twelve-year-old Toulouse "Tull" Trotter lives on his grandfather’s vast Bel-Air parkland estate with his mother, the beautiful, drug-addicted Katrina, a landscape artist who specializes in topiary laby-rinths. He spends most of his time with his young cousins Lucy, the girl detective, and Edward, a prodigy undaunted by the disfiguring effects of Apert Syndrome. One day, an impulsive revelation from Lucy sets in motion a chain of events that changes Tull -- and the Trotter family -- forever.

Though the story unfolds in contemporary Los Angeles, the reader hears echoes of Proust and 1,001 Nights as Toulouse seeks his lost father, a woman finds her lost love, and a family of unimaginable wealth learns that its fate is tied to those of the orphan Amaryllis (who officially aspires to be a saint) and her protector, a courtly giant of a homeless schizophrenic -- both of them on the run from the law. Along a path shaded by murder and mysticism, we meet such unforgettable characters as Fitzsimmons, a deranged former social worker; the enterprising Monasterio family of servants (Candelaria, Epitacio, and Eulogio); "Someone-Help-Me", a streetwise devil; and Pullman, a seemingly ageless Great Dane.

Complexly wrought, deeply moving, and scathingly ironic, I'll Let You Go dazzles the reader with the unique blend of gorgeous prose, acerbic wit, and deep emotion that are the specific province of Bruce Wagner.

About this title

Review:

A Victorianesque tale of Los Angeles's elite and waifish children await in Bruce Wagner's third novel, I'll Let You Go. A forlorn 12-year-old, "Tull" Trotter, distanced from his artist mother due to her drug addiction, is left to his own devices--along with his two privileged cousins, one of whom is grotesquely deformed, wearing hoods of his own design. Mainly set on the sprawling estate of Tull's grandfather (the 18th richest person in America), the children befriend an inner-city orphan (who is protected by a sharp but mentally disturbed homeless man) and embark on solving a mystery that ties these two disparate worlds together.

Ambitious in its design, Wagner's novel adeptly catalogs contemporary America's materialistic preoccupations and its pop culture, sometimes allowing litanies of prescription drugs or opulent goods to impart meaning. Wagner's prose can be moving or exacting ("One side of the newfound grandfather's face sank down a bit as if today it had decided to sleep in"), but too often alliteration almost inexcusably appears: "Twitching in troubled sleep, Pullman's was the only familiar face, but even the Dane was creepily confabulated, a dogpatch of ill-fitting body parts amid Tull's tule fog REM." If you are in the mood for a Dickensian cast of characters and L.A.'s two-dimensional gloss on the world, then I'll Let You Go is for you. --Michael Ferch

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Bruce Wagner’s I’m Losing you

“[Wagner] writes like a wizard. . . . His prose writhes and coruscates.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

“Ferocious acuity. Outrageous. . . . Dead-on in every way.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Superb. . . . The author’s images, tones, and language give I’m Losing You a hard beauty that glints like black crystal.” —Time

“The year’s best book.”—Walter Kirn, New York magazine

“One of the year’s most notorious books. . . . A must-read.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Ruthlessly hip and very funny.”—Wired

“Wagner’s latest novel makes all other Hollywood satires Capraesque in their innocence.”—Will Self

“Edgy, sublime.”—New York Newsday

“Mr. Wagner . . . treats us to many glorious phrases and whole passages that have the self-propelled rhythm of great prose.”—Adam Begley, The New York Observer

About this edition

• Publisher: Villard
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375500022
• ISBN 13: 9780375500022
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576