Erik Tarloff

It's like watching a billiard game - Tarloff racks the object balls - stripes for males, solids for females and then the cue ball strikes and they ricochet off one another again and again across a tabula rasa version of Berkeley then and now.

University life itself and high tech are sort of like elephants in the room but maybe that's impossible to escape in a setting like contemporary Berkeley ? They are there in a space of absence (there be dragons?) bordered by the streets and parking lots used by the characters but overwhelmed by a focus on a different past than the one of the cyclotron.


The interior lives of the characters and multiple narrative voices create a cohesive story that could be a maudlin wallow in nostalgia in other hands but ultimately steers clear.

The women, like Tarloff's Berkeley, become known to us primarily through the protagonist - we know their story and the way we read them is not the only story of their lives - hopefully? Thankfully? The criticisms leveled at them are unrelenting while at the same time it's clear this is a story of a life chaptered by the milestones of couplehood, loss and love.… (más)

This book is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. From beginning to end the characters and the plot are drawn to be fun to watch, and carry us along from the beginning right to the end. We follow an obscure literature professor named Ezra who, with a little help from a friend, surprises everyone and especially himself by writing the titular "book" (whose cover is the front cover image). When his secret "dirty book" takes on a life of its own the repercussions to transform Ezra's own life in a way that is ultimately literature- and life-affirming. This is one of the few books I find myself wanting to revisit time and again.… (más)