All Back Full

Lopez’s (Good People) playful third novel ponders the nature of meaning and the inadequacy of language over the course of a nondescript suburban Sunday. In the morning, an unnamed man who “enjoys nuance and language and the language of nuance” has a halting conversation with his wife as they sit in their kitchen (the setting is never specified). In the afternoon, a friend joins him for a similar kitchen-counter back and forth. In the evening, all three of them talk together. The conversation and narration has a natural, free-wheeling quality, focusing on such diverse topics as their friends, dogs, birds, trees, sex, nudism, sports, illness, alcohol, and the subjectivity of time. Topics recur as the characters attempt to expose common errors of speech, fact, and memory. Through the narrator’s sardonic expressions, short sentences, clipped paragraphs, and pointedly unreliable descriptions, Lopez forms a cutting, dry humor and—to match the characters’ bleak moods—a pervasive sense of boredom. The three characters frequently question what’s knowable, as well as what’s worth arguing over, and Lopez’s cyclical techniques demonstrate one of the unnamed narrator’s many oft-repeated phrases: “awkwardness, confusion, frustration.” The novel’s motifs eventually intertwine in a satisfying ending that, like much of what’s said, is open to interpretation and misinterpretation. Fans of Lopez’s previous work will enjoy his latest, as will patient newcomers with an interest in drama and metafiction. (Feb.)