Looking for Przybylski

Though he is perhaps best known for his novels depicting life in the Soviet Union, Frederick (Lyletown) has lately begun to explore the lives of Eastern Europeans in the U.S. and to mine the tension of divided loyalties and unexpected consequences. In his new novel he hones in on Ziggy Czarnecki, a one-time “numbers kingpin” thinking about mortality. A chance remark, suggesting that Ziggy’s long-ago nemesis, the undertaker Przybylski, may have been responsible for the raid that transformed Ziggy from successful to struggling forces him to re-evaluate “Rule Number One: don’t ever look back.” Propelled by an opaque impulse, Ziggy boards a Greyhound in blighted Detroit, where he lives, headed for California, where Przybylski lives. Traveling west, Ziggy meets people whose stories help him make sense of his past. In L.A., he reconnects with a nearly forgotten friend, and with his own son, who he hasn’t seen in four years. Soon enough, he can hardly remember what it was he wanted to see Przybylski about. Ziggy’s quest is related without sentiment, and while its scope is hardly epic, it resonates as a rumination on the trials and triumphs of a newly examined life. (Oct.)