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L.I.E.: A Novel
"At once mordantly funny and achingly sad, L.I.E. is a soul map for modern suburbia."--Sheri Holman, author of The Dress LodgerLong Island, New York, 1987: Harlan Kessler--raised in Medford, a product of blue-collar Suffolk County, of housing developments and concrete strip malls--graduates from high school. He hangs out, he parties, he plays guitar for the Dayglow Crazies (the local rock-and-roll phenomenon), and he struggles diligently to lose his virginity. He doesn't think about the future much. The Long Island Expressway (L.I.E.) cleaves the landscape, permitting passage west, to the tonier climes of Nassau County and New York City, but to Harlan, this seems like an impossible journey, something beyond his Long Island birthright. And what's worse, evidence is accumulating that Harlan may not exist at all, that he may merely be a character in someone else's story, a fleeting thought in the mind of God. L.I.E. follows Harlan, his family, and his friends through two years of love, sex, death, betrayal, salvation, and enlightenment. In ten intimately interwoven stories, in prose that swings fluidly from gritty realism to heightened metafiction, David Hollander maps an American landscape that is at once vividly familiar and highly exotic, creating an unforgettable portrait of the passage to adult-hood and the search for identity, certain to resonate with legions of readers. By turns dark, funny, raw, and elegant, L.I.E. is the striking debut of a singular voice.The last wisps of afternoon streak and evaporate into blue-gray dusk, submersing Long Island in twilight. Harlan and Rik Giannati sit on the curb outside Rik's house, precisely 211 yards northeast of Harlan's house, the distance punctuated by no fewer than fourteen subtly distinct houses of three the square, steeple-roofed Granada; the split-level LaSalle; the two-story, three-bedroom Monte Carlo. This last model was the choice of Kessler and Giannati alike some ten years ago when they, too, were assimilated in the mass exodus from Queens to Suffolk County that had gripped the hearts and genitals of so many. The streetlamps began to glow along Rustic Avenue, a cold blue flicker spaced at even intervals, like isolated members of the same species, each shivering in its cage of frosted glass. --From L.I.E.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 15, 2000
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About the author
David Hollander
5 books59 followersThe Author is the author of the novel L.I.E., which was nominated for the NYPL Young Lions Award back at the turn of the century, and of the recently released ANTHROPICA. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Conjunctions, Fence, Agni, Unsaid, The New York Times Magazine, and Post Road, among other reputable and disreputable publications. It's also been adapted for film and frequently anthologized, notably in Best American Fantasy. He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and two children and teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
www.longlivetheauthor.com
www.longlivetheauthor.com
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 15, 2020
A chronicle of late 80's suburban ennui and lives of quiet desperation that slowly and subtly reveals itself as a sort of metaphysical/ontological horror story; a quite pleasant surprise.
September 21, 2009
Given the number of times I've heard this book dismissed by its author, when I finally got around to it I wasn't expecting much more than a little light reading between DeLillo and Montaigne, or whoever the hell else I've decided I'd better read before I dare call myself a writer. I also assumed it would be annoying.
L.I.E. is neither "light" nor "annoying." It's pretty fucking good, honestly, so good that I have bit of a hard time understanding how this isn't a book that people talk about.
One possible reason: I don't have my copy with me as I jot this response, but I'm almost positive the designation "coming of age" was deployed by at least one reviewer. And I think the lead blurb calls L.I.E. a "soul map for modern suburbia." A nice enough thing to say, only L.I.E. isn't about suburbia any more than There Will Be Blood is about oil. A discouraging confusion, though I suppose unavoidable if you're going to people your narrative with soul-hungry youths. "Soul" is the quoted phrase's relevant term, but not as it's used there: disguised as a clever, formally playful revisitation of a particular (somewhat familiar) portion of the American-adolescent experience, L.I.E. is honestly nothing less than an extended disquisition on the nature of the soul.
On the other hand, and this was something of a surprise to me, as I haven't seen this quality so often in the author's other stuff, L.I.E. is really funny.
The prose scintillates, the experimentation works (it more than "works," it justifies itself in the only way that experimentation can ever be justified, by achieving effects that could not have been achieved any other way; I'm thinking particularly of the Joycean phantasmagoria late-novel), and, most impressively to me, the thought is almost as sweepingly intense as the bombastically-selected epigraph seems to announce.
Read this, if you haven't yet.
L.I.E. is neither "light" nor "annoying." It's pretty fucking good, honestly, so good that I have bit of a hard time understanding how this isn't a book that people talk about.
One possible reason: I don't have my copy with me as I jot this response, but I'm almost positive the designation "coming of age" was deployed by at least one reviewer. And I think the lead blurb calls L.I.E. a "soul map for modern suburbia." A nice enough thing to say, only L.I.E. isn't about suburbia any more than There Will Be Blood is about oil. A discouraging confusion, though I suppose unavoidable if you're going to people your narrative with soul-hungry youths. "Soul" is the quoted phrase's relevant term, but not as it's used there: disguised as a clever, formally playful revisitation of a particular (somewhat familiar) portion of the American-adolescent experience, L.I.E. is honestly nothing less than an extended disquisition on the nature of the soul.
On the other hand, and this was something of a surprise to me, as I haven't seen this quality so often in the author's other stuff, L.I.E. is really funny.
The prose scintillates, the experimentation works (it more than "works," it justifies itself in the only way that experimentation can ever be justified, by achieving effects that could not have been achieved any other way; I'm thinking particularly of the Joycean phantasmagoria late-novel), and, most impressively to me, the thought is almost as sweepingly intense as the bombastically-selected epigraph seems to announce.
Read this, if you haven't yet.
June 27, 2018
There’s a chance Hollander could teach my son next year at Sarah Lawrence and, in any case, he’s been a mentor to my cousin David, but I’d have good things to say about this in any case.
The back-cover description gets right what’s happening in the story, but it falls short of explaining what’s really going on. This is a year-in-the-life of a group of suburban Long Island kids and their families as they deal with events in and around the end of high school. It’s also very funny, and then it veers into a remarkable examination of the nature of fiction.
The first substantial chapter of the novel turns into a multi-threaded narrative that comes together in a wonderfully humiliating moment funny enough to recall Thurber’s “The Night the Bed Fell.” After a series of separate misunderstandings and broken plans, Harlan Kessler is about to lose his virginity on the floor of his parents’ living room when everyone – parents, siblings, neighbors – arrives in flagrante delicto. Oh, and his dog dies too.
That aesthetic dominates the first half as Harlan experiences a Charlie-Brown-football relationship to his can’t-get-rid-of-it virginity. If the novel had simply continued in the same vein, I’d still have enjoyed it.
[SPOILER] It moves on, though, chronicling his successful relationship with Sarah, his growth as a guitar player, and his growing unhappiness with life on “Wrong Island.” As it does so, it becomes increasingly experimental in its narrative. We get, for one, a lengthy chapter written in the form of a play, featuring a sub-plot where Harlan saws his own skull open, releasing his brain, which goes on to saw itself open, releasing another brain, and so on. It can’t happen, and indeed it doesn’t, but it sets us up for the possibility that we’re leaving conventional narrative behind.
Then, in the final full chapter, we do indeed leave it. As Harlan rides in a car with a guitarist friend, he listens to a tape recording they’ve just made of their own jam session. As it turns out, though, they’ve inadvertently recorded Hollander himself as he’s written their secret thoughts. It’s excruciating for Harlan, but there’s no turning it off. His life isn’t real; it’s comprised of the words Hollander is giving us.
The effect is a dramatic broken fourth wall, and [SPOILER CONTINUED] Hollander emphasizes it by having Harlan simply drive off the page. He escapes his own narrator, Hollander himself, and we’re left with a striking final mini-chapter. In place of narration, we have a series of characters commenting on Harlan’s disappearance, talking as if they too have been freed from whatever plans Hollander had for them. The novel concludes, then, not with an ending but an unraveling, and the effect is profoundly liberating. Harlan belongs now to the world – or at least to us readers who are moved enough to continue thinking of him – rather than to the writer who created him.
I think all of that reflects some of the same things that Rick Moody tries to do – the novel is dedicated to Moody – but I like this more than the Moody I’ve read. (To be fair, the only full-length book of his I’ve read is The Five Fingers of Death.) Both men seem to balance a kind of punk aesthetic, a tendency to maul the structure of their work, with a real affection for their characters.
Here, it’s clear that Hollander cares about Harlan, that he wants this conceited, moderately talented and reasonably bright kid to find something like happiness. He won’t make it easy on him, but he will give him a shot at eventual fulfillment, a fulfillment he’d never satisfactorily find through any conventional narrative.
I apologize for giving more spoilers than I’d usually like, but I think it’s the unusual moves that take this from something funny and insightful into the realm of really provocative. If you love something, set it free. I guess that means Hollander loves his character, and it’s hard not to share a good bit of that for the character and the book as well.
The back-cover description gets right what’s happening in the story, but it falls short of explaining what’s really going on. This is a year-in-the-life of a group of suburban Long Island kids and their families as they deal with events in and around the end of high school. It’s also very funny, and then it veers into a remarkable examination of the nature of fiction.
The first substantial chapter of the novel turns into a multi-threaded narrative that comes together in a wonderfully humiliating moment funny enough to recall Thurber’s “The Night the Bed Fell.” After a series of separate misunderstandings and broken plans, Harlan Kessler is about to lose his virginity on the floor of his parents’ living room when everyone – parents, siblings, neighbors – arrives in flagrante delicto. Oh, and his dog dies too.
That aesthetic dominates the first half as Harlan experiences a Charlie-Brown-football relationship to his can’t-get-rid-of-it virginity. If the novel had simply continued in the same vein, I’d still have enjoyed it.
[SPOILER] It moves on, though, chronicling his successful relationship with Sarah, his growth as a guitar player, and his growing unhappiness with life on “Wrong Island.” As it does so, it becomes increasingly experimental in its narrative. We get, for one, a lengthy chapter written in the form of a play, featuring a sub-plot where Harlan saws his own skull open, releasing his brain, which goes on to saw itself open, releasing another brain, and so on. It can’t happen, and indeed it doesn’t, but it sets us up for the possibility that we’re leaving conventional narrative behind.
Then, in the final full chapter, we do indeed leave it. As Harlan rides in a car with a guitarist friend, he listens to a tape recording they’ve just made of their own jam session. As it turns out, though, they’ve inadvertently recorded Hollander himself as he’s written their secret thoughts. It’s excruciating for Harlan, but there’s no turning it off. His life isn’t real; it’s comprised of the words Hollander is giving us.
The effect is a dramatic broken fourth wall, and [SPOILER CONTINUED] Hollander emphasizes it by having Harlan simply drive off the page. He escapes his own narrator, Hollander himself, and we’re left with a striking final mini-chapter. In place of narration, we have a series of characters commenting on Harlan’s disappearance, talking as if they too have been freed from whatever plans Hollander had for them. The novel concludes, then, not with an ending but an unraveling, and the effect is profoundly liberating. Harlan belongs now to the world – or at least to us readers who are moved enough to continue thinking of him – rather than to the writer who created him.
I think all of that reflects some of the same things that Rick Moody tries to do – the novel is dedicated to Moody – but I like this more than the Moody I’ve read. (To be fair, the only full-length book of his I’ve read is The Five Fingers of Death.) Both men seem to balance a kind of punk aesthetic, a tendency to maul the structure of their work, with a real affection for their characters.
Here, it’s clear that Hollander cares about Harlan, that he wants this conceited, moderately talented and reasonably bright kid to find something like happiness. He won’t make it easy on him, but he will give him a shot at eventual fulfillment, a fulfillment he’d never satisfactorily find through any conventional narrative.
I apologize for giving more spoilers than I’d usually like, but I think it’s the unusual moves that take this from something funny and insightful into the realm of really provocative. If you love something, set it free. I guess that means Hollander loves his character, and it’s hard not to share a good bit of that for the character and the book as well.
January 23, 2015
Meet my new favorite book.
Brilliant, hilarious, crushing. Hollander is a remarkable and refreshing stylist. Sentence for sentence - among the best I've encountered. His unique voice, use of language and structure are exhilarating. Set against the backdrop of deadening, disturbing suburbia in the late 80s/90s, the story and characters are irresistible, at once familiar and utterly strange. The existential stuff is genius and timely as ever. It reads like the author had a ton of fun, (and not at anyone's expense) and while I'm sure it was hard as hell to pull off such a feat, what a joy to feel that exuberance come through. I can't figure out how I missed this book when it first came out, as it's right up my alley, except maybe its release in the wake of 9/11 might have had something to do with it as I didn't very much that year. But I'm so glad I found it or it found me because L.I.E. shook something alive in me, and makes me want to rush to the page and write. For me, there's no higher compliment.
Brilliant, hilarious, crushing. Hollander is a remarkable and refreshing stylist. Sentence for sentence - among the best I've encountered. His unique voice, use of language and structure are exhilarating. Set against the backdrop of deadening, disturbing suburbia in the late 80s/90s, the story and characters are irresistible, at once familiar and utterly strange. The existential stuff is genius and timely as ever. It reads like the author had a ton of fun, (and not at anyone's expense) and while I'm sure it was hard as hell to pull off such a feat, what a joy to feel that exuberance come through. I can't figure out how I missed this book when it first came out, as it's right up my alley, except maybe its release in the wake of 9/11 might have had something to do with it as I didn't very much that year. But I'm so glad I found it or it found me because L.I.E. shook something alive in me, and makes me want to rush to the page and write. For me, there's no higher compliment.
March 13, 2019
The energy of this book is derived from the east and west routes of the Peterbilt cluttered lanes of the human psyche. Coming-of-age on a sandbar couldn't have been easy, so the only way to convey such a nightmare is for the story to come head to head with style - total style, no hold backs. Narrator's living in his own movie, even marks up his narrative with the linguistic leanings of a Hollywood screenplay. "Pan out. Slow fade to black" (H-, 92).
Best sentence? Not sure, but I dug this: "... the odds tilt, courtship takes the high road, or any other road that leads quietly and invisibly indoors" (H-. 102). Word.
Best sentence? Not sure, but I dug this: "... the odds tilt, courtship takes the high road, or any other road that leads quietly and invisibly indoors" (H-. 102). Word.
August 9, 2015
NOT the same as the movie by the same name.
January 16, 2019
This book was well on its way to 4 stars. I was really enjoying it but got somewhat deflated when it took a sudden and unexpected turn late into it. I didn't get it. Still liked it but am left a little confused.
March 24, 2019
Love this book so much. David Hollander is a force & I can't wait for his new novel - Anthropica from Dead Rabbits Books - to come out!
October 17, 2019
I feel like I can't properly review this as I'm biased towards David as both a person and a mentor, but I really liked this. The stories (chapters?) were equal parts hilarious, inventive, sinister and tragic. Seemingly a story at first about coming-of-age in American suburbia, once I got to the end (which simultaneously confused and thrilled me), I felt like the whole foundation of the book had been turned on its head, and immediately wanted to reread the book in search of new clues for my new theory of focus. And of course, I simply enjoyed the writing.
March 19, 2019
Love this book! It made me want to write experimental, thoughtful fiction. His language is wild and electric. Hollander set the gold standard for sentences!
December 29, 2011
L.I.E. is kind of hard to describe because it barely has a plot. It loosely follows a guy named Harlan and his girlfriend (sometimes) Sarah through various periods of their young adult life in the late 1980s/early 1990s. It's a very disjointed story that cuts to a different storyline practically every paragraph and a different year every chapter.
I don't think I "got" this book. It started off really boring. In the middle, it sort of got interesting for a chapter or two when the story started flowing a little better (i.e. not jumping back and forth between EVERY paragraph). Then the last third or so what just a big pile of WTF.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
It starts getting kind of weird when Sarah borrows Harlan's car and gets run off the road by a black car with tinted windows. Up until this point, it was pretty much your run-of-the-mill teenage angst story. But then Sarah get away from the black car and it follows her to Harlan's workplace parking lot where the car tries to run her over. After escaping again, they open the car door to discover a crash test dummy was driving the rogue car. WHAT? Then a new chapter starts in some other year. Nothing else is said about it. If anyone can explain that to me, please do.
Also, the end is weird and makes no sense. Harlan and his new friend are driving the friend's little sister to school. They are trying to listen to a tape they made of their band and all of a sudden, the tape starts spewing out the book. Like an actual narration from the book you're currently reading - describing what they're doing and such. Of course this freaks them out. This is also never explained because the book just ENDS.
***END OF SPOILERS***
Why are we introducing new characters in the last chapter? WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT TAPE ABOUT?? This has got to be the most baffling book I have ever read.
I don't think I "got" this book. It started off really boring. In the middle, it sort of got interesting for a chapter or two when the story started flowing a little better (i.e. not jumping back and forth between EVERY paragraph). Then the last third or so what just a big pile of WTF.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
It starts getting kind of weird when Sarah borrows Harlan's car and gets run off the road by a black car with tinted windows. Up until this point, it was pretty much your run-of-the-mill teenage angst story. But then Sarah get away from the black car and it follows her to Harlan's workplace parking lot where the car tries to run her over. After escaping again, they open the car door to discover a crash test dummy was driving the rogue car. WHAT? Then a new chapter starts in some other year. Nothing else is said about it. If anyone can explain that to me, please do.
Also, the end is weird and makes no sense. Harlan and his new friend are driving the friend's little sister to school. They are trying to listen to a tape they made of their band and all of a sudden, the tape starts spewing out the book. Like an actual narration from the book you're currently reading - describing what they're doing and such. Of course this freaks them out. This is also never explained because the book just ENDS.
***END OF SPOILERS***
Why are we introducing new characters in the last chapter? WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT TAPE ABOUT?? This has got to be the most baffling book I have ever read.
May 3, 2013
David Hollander’s “L.I.E.” (Long Island Expressway) reminded me of being young and fucked up or the first time I fingered a girl, jamming with my friends in my parents basement, and all around being an ungrateful punk and thinking you have the world in the palm of your hand. Spanning the late eighties to the early nineties the book follows a small group of young teens, late in high school, who are struggling to make sense of it all. Every exit of the L.I.E. turns into a story connecting each one by the road (of life/literal road) and into its metaphorical, and literal, suburb of the mind. Although I usually condone trying something out of the ordinary the flow of this book left much to be desired, and was overall confusing. Written in the format of a screenplay, and at times a play, it did not transfer well to a reader friendly book format, and jumps around constantly. Although it could just be me complaining about being lost the whole time. The writing was good and full of vast descriptions and I often felt connected to certain subjects in the book but the format still made it one of my less favorable books to read.
December 11, 2014
I had bought this book on clearance at Barnes and Noble a couple of years ago. It caught my eye because the L.I.E was a big part of my life growing up in Queens, NY. The book did talk a bit about living in Long Island and the L.I.E. itself, especially in the later chapters of the book which are titled by the exits on the L.I.E, but mostly the book was about a young guy named Harlan growing up in the early 70's. Mostly the story revolves around Harlan's sexuality and family life. It is a quick read but just a so, so book.
August 15, 2007
this book was terrible, but maybe if you are from long island you will like it. I mean, I didn't like the movie Dazed and Confused either. It has one good paragraph, and that's the one about being straight edge. Otherwise, it's just a totally depressing book about depressed (and boring!) people going nowhere fast.
August 16, 2011
Absolutely one of my favorite books. A delightful mix of "fact" and supernatural. Darkly humorous, semi-tragic and completely engrossing. Any one who spent their teenage years on Long Island should check this book out.
November 21, 2015
Wish I could give it a three and a half. Dips at points, but if you've read anything by Rick Moody, you'll definitely see how much of a send up it is.
*PS nothing to do with the film of the same name.
*PS nothing to do with the film of the same name.
February 17, 2010
Read it again. Will probably read it again-again.
December 28, 2007
Cool book from a cool dude. Like riding a train through suburbia with someone who hates it all, but can at least be funny about it.
August 18, 2007
don't actually remember it, though i know i read it
June 12, 2012
I didn't want this book to end. If only I had it back in the days of my own LI adolescence. It might have changed everything.
September 22, 2014
I have to admit I read this only after seeing the movie. Both are great for the Creepy Suburbia style.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews