Kirjahaku

A satirical tale of one man's struggle to overcome the ghosts of his past and make sense of the present. Left by Sam, his lover of 15 years, Joel becomes obsessed by the different lives he could have led and embarks on a quest to hunt down the object of his teenage fantasy.

A poignant and satirical tale of one man's struggle to overcome the ghosts of his past and make sense of the present. In this, his third novel, acclaimed author Mark Merlis artfully intertwines the pathos of loneliness with a subtle critique of the American political machine.Joel Lingeman has been set adrift. Until recently, life was 'relative contentedness'; working for Congress, frequenting the Hill club a little too frequently, cooking dinner for two every night and routine sex on Sundays. Now Sam, his lover of fifteen years, has left him for a stunning twenty-three year old and he cannot score a trick in the sleaziest pick-up joint in town. Joel's revulsion for the politics around him has dissipated into mild amusement at the 'social Darwinists' ready to snatch the last cents from the hands of the old and ailing. And he is increasingly obsessed by the different lives he could have led. When a teenage fantasy reasserts itself, the blond haired demi-god his eye once fell upon modelling swimsuits in the back of an old magazine, Joel is overcome by a pervasive sense of loss and embarks on a quest to hunt down 'the Santa Fe boy'.Astutely observed and resonant with dark, sardonic undertones, Man About Town is an unforgettable novel about losing your way, your self-esteem and your security.

Mark Merlis' exceptional first novel. Dark humour, biting wit and dazzling prose infuse this story of desire and betrayal, history and healing.

As modern as a mobile phone and as ancient as The Iliad, Mark Merlis's second novel occupies two worlds simultaneously.

Jonathan Ascher, a radical writer and cultural hero in the 1960s, has been dead for thirty years. When a would-be biographer approaches his widow, Martha, she delves for the first time into her husband’s papers. She finds journals that begin as a wisecracking chronicle of life at the fringes of the New York literary scene, Jonathan’s adventures in the sexual underground, and the social upheavals that led to his famous book JD. As Martha reads on, she finds herself in a long-distance conversation with her dead husband, fighting with him again about their rocky life together and learning about the unseen tragic drama in her own apartment that ended with the destruction of their son, Mickey. Learning about herself, finally, through her confrontation with a man who will not let her go, even in death. JD is a brilliant and harrowing view of a half century of the American experiment, acted out on a small stage by three people who cannot find a way—neither sex nor touch nor words—to speak their love for one another.