All About Lulu

Starred review from March 28, 2011
William Miller Jr. is a skinny wallflower in coke-bottle glasses whose mother died of cancer while he's still young. When his father, a professional bodybuilder named Big Bill, remarries, Will gains a confidante and object of obsessive adolescent love in his new stepsister, Lulu. Will's sweet-sounding voice is one of his defining characteristics; he dreams of taking advantage of it as a radio show host, and Michael Mish's voice is correspondingly rich and expressive: it sounds like it would be right at home on the airwaves. Mish's performance adeptly communicates Will's intense longing for Lulu, his feelings of inadequacy, and his heartbreak. The narration is well paced, and every one of Will's self-deprecating jokes is ably timed. His Lulu makes a believable progression from chatty girl to hysterical-sounding teen to distressed young woman. His Big Bill is somehow both stoic and goofy, and Mish brings the right amount of dopiness to Will's dim-witted twin brothers. Even minor characters are afforded memorable voices in this superb reading. A Soft Skull hardcover.

Starred review from May 12, 2008
Evison's debut—of love and loss, growing up, throwing up and moving on—is a stunner. William Miller Jr. is a scrawny loner whose mother dies of cancer when he is seven years old, leaving him an awkward vegetarian with an ominously macho father and idiot twin brothers in mid-1970s Santa Monica. William's father, Big Bill, remarries a grief counselor named Willow, and Will spends the following decades in love with Louisa (Lulu, as she prefers to be called), his new stepsister. They are close throughout adolescence, but after a summer at cheerleading camp, Lulu returns home distant and hostile, leaving Will to pine for her in solitary desperation. Will finally appears to be on the path to normalcy in the early 1990s when he lucks into a radio talk-show hosting gig, but the stroke of good fortune is short-lived, as he discovers things about Lulu he'd rather not know. Evison provides readers a viciously funny and deeply felt portrayal of a blended family and one man's thwarted longing.