Lonesome Lies Before Us

Lee’s well-written but uninspiring fifth book (after The Collective) follows Yadin Park and Jeanette Matsuda, residents of Rosarita Bay, Calif., as they enter middle age. Yadin, retired from a career as an alt-country singer/songwriter, installs carpet for a living. His girlfriend, Jeanette, who once dreamed of becoming a documentary photographer, cleans rooms at a fancy resort,. Yadin’s secret desire to make one more album threatens their relationship, as do his medical and financial woes, Jeanette’s coolness toward him, their lingering feelings for former lovers, and the municipal and state politics that disrupt their community. Lee depicts his characters with an impressive commitment to detail and backstory. He renders their workdays with long sections full of vivid minutiae and reveals their pasts a little at a time, demonstrating how their families, obsessions, and tragedies have influenced their worldviews. Lee writes with stirring eloquence about the regret and longing both characters struggle to master. In too many places, however, the prose descends into knotted, passive phrasings; the use of detail at times suffocates; and brand names disrupt the flow. When Jeanette fears that Yadin is cheating on her with another woman, for instance, she wonders: “Was he... naked on the Rivolta Carmignani sheets, rutting into her on the Sealy Posturepedic Plush?” The plot builds to a dramatic climax that it then declines to deliver. The unsatisfying ending and awkward writing ultimately undo the initial promise of the novel’s compelling protagonists. (June)