Short Take |
“The Long Haul” — come for the story, want to flee, stay for the writing.
By
Published: Dec 22, 2015
I met Amanda Stern at a publishing party. A few minutes before I had to leave, I was bored. So I asked her, “If I don’t hit on you, can we talk for 10 minutes?” About three minutes in, I knew I wanted to read her novel, “The Long Haul.” Key fact: It was published in 2003, when she was really, really young. As are her characters: The Alcoholic, who’s 20 but looks 17, and the narrator, his girlfriend, who looks 15. The book hits the hipster low points: drugs, rock clubs, chain-smoking, attempted rape, attachments to former shrinks, long road trips. A lot of that life strikes this old fart as appalling. But the themes matter at any age: In a relationship, “what about the future, the long haul?” and “Is life worth living when you’ve let someone else choose the life you’re to lead?” Along the way, there’s wit: “I am starting to love him a total of an hour a week.” And wisdom: “It’s like the day after someone dies, when you see everything as if for the first time, because the world has new meaning without them.” This novel marks the beginning of a writer with a future. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
