A*Hole: A Novel

Description

The Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac is told through the distorted lens of popular culture. With "A Hole", Hilton Obenzinger has created an experimental fiction readers will experience as much as read. He draws from sources as varied as Mark Twain, the Patty Hearst story, the Biblical story of Abraham & Isaac, Melville's "Ishmael", detective fiction, his own experiences as a father and a teacher on Yuork Indian reservations, Hollywood and the porn industry, which he swirls together around the vortex created by the pull of his central hole. A young boy wakes one morning to discover he is sinking into the earth despite the new sneakers his parents promised would save him. A young woman begins reviewing films before they are made. A postal worker named Gary fulfills his occupational cliche and attacks Danny DeVito. A father writes letters to his wayward and far-flung sons. An archeologist finds evidence, perhaps, of the permeance of time as well as earth. A detective accepts a case requiring him to connect Patty Hearst to her other self. Though the story in "A Hole" is in continual flux, Obenzinger skillfully braids the multiple narrative threads into a novel which is much larger than its physical size, lyrically beautiful, and absorbing through and through.

Hilton Obenzinger is the author of Cannibal Eliot and the Lost Histories of San Francisco, New York on Fire (available from Turnaround) and This Passover Or The Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem, winner of the Before Columbus American Book Award. Earlier books include The Day of the Exquisite Poet is Kaput and Bright Lights! Big City!,

"Hilton Obenzinger is an American original. His lost histories are acts of legerdemain and cunning-mixing truth and imagination in ways rarely seen before." - Paul Auster"