All About Lulu

Narrators don’t get much more companionable than Jonathan Evison’s William Miller, a puny vegetarian kid in a family of meat-scarfing bodybuilders living in late-’70s Santa Monica. Despondent after his mother’s death, Will is brought back to life by Lulu, the stepsister he acquires when his father remarries. They grow “like two stalks into one plant,” sharing an invented language as well as their first sexual fumblings. But then Lulu pulls away, sinking into a self-destructive adolescence. At this point, there’s still a heartbreaking secret that Will has yet to learn, and we follow him on his path to discovering it—to college (philosophy major), through stints as a late-night radio host and a hot-dog entrepreneur, and eventually back to the elusive Lulu herself.

Evison’s debut novel glows with evocative details and unforgettable scenes: Will oiling his father up for competition, a drunken night in the desert involving a life-size concrete dinosaur. The enchanted weirdness of L.A. and the intense sibling relationship have been done before, but Will’s voice is entirely his own—romantic and cutting, believing and skeptical, soaring and down-to-earth. He is sometimes rhapsodic, comparing Lulu to “a white-hearted starburst, a silver-crested wave…the sound electricity makes”; he describes touching her “with the strongest most delicate touch in the world—like the thumb of God running down the spine of a baby bird.” But he’s also a sardonic loner who admits to skipping a rock show in favor of staying home and watching Alf. At turns anguished and entertaining, Will effortlessly offers us a story of sweet complexity, about the people you want to hold on to, and the ones you have to let go.