(Fiction; Free Press, 2007)
Flipping through the first novels on the front table of any major bookseller can be like spinning the radio dial on a cross-country road trip: you hear fragments of song, a few recognizable strains, but a clear signal is nowhere to be found. Sometimes, however, all at once you pass the right spot on the dial, and you’ve got a voice full in your ear, as if it were being broadcast only for you. This is the experience of opening What You Have Left, longtime literary magazine editor Will Allison’s debut. Turn it up. Settle in.
