When Theodore receives a postcard saying “I need to see you,” he initially ignores it — after all, it’s unsettling to open mail from one’s dead mother. But when another card arrives he can no longer put off the urgent meeting, and so Theodore treks to Cleveland to track his mother down. In this strange, thoughtful novel by Jim Krusoe, Theodore travels through the worlds of Uleene, a member of the all-girl biker club Satan’s Samaritans; art; rodent extermination; and sport fishing, all the while realizing that the line between life and death is remarkably fluid.
“Smart and funny...Krusoe is an engaging writer and an acute observer of his own brand of quotidian strangeness...Krusoe's witty book, for all its drifting in the slipstream of realistic narrative, ends up being, in the old and honest and satisfying sense, familiar.”—John Haskell, The New York Times Book Review
"...this novel has the power to draw us into its bizarre world...Krusoe reminds us that the best prescription for bereavement might just be a healthy dose of action. That better place is just around the next corner."—George Ducker, The Los Angeles Times
"A fine writer with an offbeat turn of phrase..." —Alison Hallett, Portland Mercury
"The pace of the book resembles a dream: It starts slowly, carefully accumulating details, and then rushes at the end...Erased raises more questions than it answers, but it offers some very entertaining speculation along the way."—Elliott Holt, TheRumpus.net
"Erased tells the not unlikely story—not in Jim Krusoe’s funny, absurdist fiction—of a man who receives a post card from his dead mother, inviting him to Cleveland, Ohio, where he finds mystery in a kind of simultaneous civic dreamland and nightmare, and also discovers social organizations that seem only to assure the hopelessness and nutty redemption of a fictional world that echoes Kafka and Barthelme, except even funnier." —Andrew Tonkovich, Bibliocracy Radio
"This novel, by Jim Krusoe, from the consistently interesting Tin House Books, purports to explore 'women's clubs, art, rodent extermination, and sport fishing.' I've no idea how this detail from a famous Bosch painting connects, but it sure is charming."—The Book Bench, The New Yorker Blog
"Erased develops the quirky environs of Krusoe's America with its existential inconsistencies while injecting some human feeling and warm humor into the proceedings."—Sharon Fulton, Open Letters Monthly
"Krusoe is very, very funny, but thoughtful as well in Erased."—Paul Ingram, Prairie Lights
|
| Friday, May 17 at 7:30pm |
| RICHARD LANGE reads from ANGEL BABY |
| Saturday, May 18 at 5:00pm |
