Hello, hello, hello.

I am pleased to report that my review of Sam Lipsyte’s newest novel The Ask is now online at the Quarterly Conversation.

Please link right on over there and read it. However, if you are pressed for time now that we are in this Holiday Season, I offer you the abbreviated version of my review:

The Ask is a) awesome, b) a real thigh-slapper, and c) something you should buy right now, right now.

What’s more, it sustains the qualities present in Lipsyte’s last book, Homeland, which I remember buying at the Eliot Bay Book Co. probably around three years ago, while I was in Seattle on a business trip. I remember getting rained on during my long, long walk from my hotel downtown out to Pioneer Square, where the bookstore is located, and thinking that this was a very Seattle experience and that I should feel grateful. Homeland turned out to be one of those books that you start reading before you get off the property, it’s so good, and which I did down in the bookstore’s cafe basement, where I bought a complex brownie and a large coffee. It was all wonderfully warm and cozy.

As bonus, related content, here is a link to an article about that bookstore, which might be closing: The plot thickens for legendary bookstore. It’s from the L.A. Times.