Memorial by Bruce Wagner Reviewed by Anna Godbersen
Esquire
"For a writer who made his name satirizing celebrity-sick Los Angeles circa now, Bruce Wagner's latest work ? the rhapsodic, potty-mouthed family saga Memorial ? has a lot of nineteenth-century novelistic turns. There is sprawl to match the setting. There are wild coincidences and omniscient intrusions. There are long-lost family members living, unawares, in the same metropolis. There are involved legal maneuverings, multiple pregnancies, extremes of wealth and poverty, and, particularly toward the end, the risk of broad strokes and melodrama. When a character comments, 'That's what America was about: a horrorfilm rapeathon pileup,' he could also be talking about this novel." Read the entire Esquire review.