Synopses & Reviews
The National Book Award winning author returns to his original fictional territory — the lives of the dispossessed in San Francisco — with a parable about the limitations of desire and life at the margins of society
In such earlier works of fiction as The Rainbow Stories and The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann wrote of pimps, prostitutes, addicts and homeless dreamers in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. In this new novel, Vollmann returns there with a story that centers around a woman with magical powers whom everyone loves, and who has to love them all back.
After being initiated into a coven of island witches, Neva begins to fulfill her fate in a Tenderloin dive bar. Her worshippers include Richard, the introverted, alcoholic, occasionally omniscient narrator; a profane, aggressive transgender sex worker named Shantelle; the brisk but motherly barmaid Francine; and the former Frank, who has renamed herself after her idol Judy Garland. When Judy starts to love Neva too much, Judy's retired policeman boyfriend embarks on a mission of exposure and destruction.
Crafted out of language by turns spiritual and sexually graphic, The Lucky Star aches with compassion as it explores celebrity culture, gender identity, incest, Christian sacrifice and, most of all, the quotidian and sometimes faltering heroism of marginalized people who in the face of humiliation and outright violence seek to love in their own way, and stand up for who they are.
Review
"Vollmann's sprawling and provocatively playful novel revisits the sordid setting of his early collection The Rainbow Stories, where sexual desire shapes characters' self-expression and pursuit of love, power, and human connection." Publishers Weekly
Review
"For all the contemporaneity in the telling, there is (as always) a certain moral quality to Vollmann's work. In this one: there is no one on earth, no one, who would not benefit from a little more love and a lot less contempt." The Millions, "Most Anticipated 2020"
Review
"Vollmann admirably captures the pull of vulnerability and invention, how sex can be, in the right space, a powerful way to know one's self, and ultimately, how much each of his characters here needs a space to be themselves." Lit Hub, "Most Anticipated 2020"
Review
"Vollmann pours his signature fascination with outcasts, women's sexuality, violence, and injustice into this gargantuan, omnivorously explicit, ravening orgy of trauma and resilience. Rooted in interviews with women survivors, this is a molten amalgam of cynicism and compassion, horror and beauty." Booklist
About the Author
William T. Vollmann is the author of ten novels, including Whores for Gloria, The Royal Family, and Europe Central, which won the National Book Award. He has also written four collections of stories (including The Rainbow Stories and The Atlas, which won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction), a memoir, and eight works of nonfiction, including Rising Up and Rising Down and Imperial, both of which were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in California.