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In the Land of the Living
By Austin Ratner
Published on March 12th 2013 Published by Reagan Arthur Books
Sarah says: "I found myself rooting for Isidore despite his shortcomings, but with Leo, all I wanted to do was get him some help to get his life in order."
The Jump Artist author, Austin Ratner, has just been in London for Jewish Book Week. Here's his On The Strand Q&A. And yes, Anna and I would write a very good obit for him!
In the Land of the Living: A Novel
March 2013 Hardcover
Austin Ratner, In the Land of the Living: A Novel
978-0-316-20609-9, $25.99
DESCRIPTION
Isidore is a brilliant young man, driven in equal measure by grief at his young mother's death, rage at his distant, abusive father, and his own fierce ambitions. When Isidore becomes a doctor, and a father himself, the cycle of grief continues, and soon it is his son Leo who is left behind too young, also grown to be a doctor. The story becomes Leo's, an alternately heartbreaking and hilarious account of his cross-country road trip with his younger brother as they try to understand their family, their relationship, and their own futures. An appealingly oddball character, angry at the world but angrier at himself, Leo yearns for love and simple satisfaction. Through his eyes we see the power of family to both destroy and create, and the price and rewards of independence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Austin Ratner's first novel, The Jump Artist, was the 2011 winner of the Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and has been honored with the Missouri Review Editors' Prize in Fiction. He attended the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Before turning his focus to writing he received his M.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and he is co-author of the textbook Concepts in Medical Physiology. He is Clinical Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine. He grew up in Cleveland, OH, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and two sons.
Publicity Contact: Liz Garriga, [email protected]
Is this nostalgia a retreat from passion such as he describes affectingly at the end of the passage? A form of shame? Yes; but it’s also the reverse—an expression of the passion of loss, of frustrated keening for a cherished time, place, person that no longer exists. I love my favorite authors, and secretly I feel convinced that they would love me if they were here. It’s this nostalgic love of something lost one feels on visiting a writer’s house, n’est-ce pas?
"The Girlfriend's Apartment" - Austin Ratner
Your apartment resembles one I had in Paris for almost two years at 19 rue de l’Est. When you pass that way, look up at the second floor. From there too there was a view over Paris. On summer nights I used to look up at the stars, and in winter at the luminous mist of the great city floating above the houses. Just as from your windows, I saw gardens, roofs, the surrounding hills. When I walked into your house it seemed to me I was reliving my past, that I had returned to one of those beautiful, sad twilights of 1843, when I would sit at my window for a little air, utterly bored, deathly depressed. If only I had known you then! Why could that not have been? I was free, alone, without family or mistress, for I have never had a mistress. You will think that I am lying. I have never been more scrupulously truthful, and this is the reason why: the grotesque aspects of love have always kept me from indulging in it. At times I have wanted to give pleasure to women, but the idea of the strange spectacle I must be presenting at that moment made me laugh so much that all my desire melted under the fire of irony, which sang a hymn of bitter derision within me. It is only with you that I have not yet laughed at myself. But when I see you so intense, absolute in your passion, I am tempted to cry out to you, “No! No! You are making a mistake! Take care! Not this man!”
The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857, pp. 54-55, Translation by Francis Steegmuller
more in Austin Ratner's post, The Girlfriend's Apartment
