woah, just stumbled onto this. evan dara wrote a great book called THE LOST SCRAPBOOK in nineteen ninety friggin five that got a blip of attention, won the FC2 contest that year (and might be the only place you’ll ever see a richard powers blurb) — and then dara hasn’t been heard of since. now, here’s his second, called THE EASY CHAIN, and i haven’t heard boo about it anywhere. (a lack of publicity i can’t help admire.) out from aurora press–which seems to be a new outift too, which only publishes (so far!) evan dara. alright. you got me. i’m interested.
…okay i found an early review which says:
“Dara’s play with perspective, however, is the novel’s great success. Time, like the narration, is very fluid. We can begin at a cocktail party and float almost magically into Lincoln’s childhood, age with him, then drift through these meetings. It’s interesting and cerebral and only occasionally distracting. Various other characters are allowed to go on about their personal philosophies and beliefs. These asides, as I’ve already mentioned, are fragmenting the story in a manner not unlike early Pynchon, but very unlike Pynchon because our hero—such as he is— is present, listening to these people—of the reader, but out of the reader’s awareness.”