{"id":6087,"date":"2015-12-23T11:24:43","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T11:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6087"},"modified":"2015-12-24T13:01:39","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T13:01:39","slug":"after-the-parade-by-lori-ostlund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6087","title":{"rendered":"After the Parade by Lori Ostlund"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Scribner 22 September 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

352pp, hardcover, $25<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A mood of gothic freakishness pervades Ostlund\u2019s debut, the engrossing story of Aaron Englund, 42, gay and living alone, at last, in San Francisco after a complicated, potentially ruinous youth. The son of a misanthropic policeman and an increasingly depressed mother, Aaron grows up timid, smart, withdrawn and socially uncertain. The curiosities that Englund introduces into his bewilderment are both shocking and compelling.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the cruelty of Aaron\u2019s father and the equally repellent home life of his uncle, into whose care the boy is temporarily given after his father\u2019s sudden death and his mother\u2019s breakdown. Even weirder are the tusks growing from the nostrils of an articulate dwarf named Clarence who is the son of Aaron\u2019s mother\u2019s good friend Gloria. Gloria too begins to develop alarming symptoms:\u00a0 owing to some physical imbalance, her hands and feet grow to gigantic proportions. All this \u2013 and considerably more \u2013 is held within Ostlund’s relatively realistic landscape, its meaning underlined by Clarence’s pointed sharing with Aaron his passion for the work of Diane Arbus to whom he has written (even though she is dead), offering himself as a subject. Odd people at one remove from society \u2013 these are the folk who populate this appealing story, which is narrated largely in flashback.<\/p>\n

Ostlund includes a great deal more plot: Aaron\u2019s abandonment; his rescue by Walter, an older man and a university professor who becomes his lover; the escape from Walter that kicks off the story and contains its own strange and memorable little seed of an episode. The author nimbly balances tragedy and humor, surprise and some predictability with\u00a0 decided charm.<\/p>\n

In particular, she skewers Aaron\u2019s good-hearted slow burn of a personality, his emergence into adulthood as an intelligent, essentially conservative gay man \u2013 \u2018You know, there\u2019s something to be said for the security of the familiar in all its confusing glory\u2019 \u2013 who is nevertheless capable of small bursts of assertion. If Aaron\u2019s childhood is characterized too often by his emblematic confusion with words and meaning, it\u2019s a forgiveable flaw in an impressive first novel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

* A 2015 Notable Book<\/p>\n

A mood of gothic freakishness pervades Ostlund\u2019s debut, the engrossing story of Aaron Englund, 42, gay and living alone, at last, in San Francisco after a complicated, potentially ruinous youth. The son of a misanthropic policeman and an increasingly depressed mother, Aaron grows up timid, smart, withdrawn and socially uncertain. The curiosities that Englund introduces into his bewilderment are both shocking and compelling […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6087"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6229,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087\/revisions\/6229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}