Still Alive

A peripatetic and promiscuous young woman seeks her life’s meaning in the fresh and vivid debut from Pemberton, a PW contributor. The recursive story is framed by a formative event in narrator V’s life. At age seven in 1989 “pre-hip” Portland, Ore., she witnessed the aftermath of a grisly car accident on her front lawn. After hearing the noise, she rushes out of the house with her parents and older brother. One of the motorists is decapitated, and V takes particular interest in the man’s severed head bleeding on their grass. Each chapter revisits the scene of the accident with other stories of her troubled childhood, such as her ill-matched parents’ infidelity and her older brother’s racism. Her college friend Leroy provides a sympathetic ear as V gets her heart broken by her girlfriend, Lex, then takes lovers of various genders and moves to New York City. She makes for a spiky yet companionable narrator as she negotiates the crummy job market of the aughts with various temp jobs (“I worked a bunch and ignored the boomer insistence that from this hodge-podge I could somehow make a career”) and continues holding a candle for Lex. Throughout, V’s desire is made palpable via Pemberton’s aching prose (“we danced... like we could make the known new with our lust”). It’s a piquant coming-of-age novel for late-blooming romantics. (Feb.)