The Kept Man

In The Kept Man, Attenberg explores the themes of identity, loss, and change through the story of Jarvis, a rootless woman who found meaning and purpose in marriage, and who now must engage in the painful process of letting go and identifying her own needs and ambitions. Attenberg does not flinch from disturbing details, and, by eschewing sentimentality, creates a moving and believable character who draws the reader into the story. PS: Those readers who had trouble with the idea that comfortably situated families would patronize a laundromat have clearly never visited Brooklyn.

As the first sentence of Jami Attenberg's prologue memorably notes, Jarvis Miller has been waiting for her husband to die for six years. Martin--an artist who isn't household-name famous but is known enough to have inspired a dissertation--has been comatose since he had an aneurism and fell off a ladder in his studio. The tragedy was great for his saleability: Jarvis isn't wanting for money, so she doesn't have to work. She doesn't have to do much of anything. She's just waiting. Unable to move forward because of her liminal status as not-quite-widow, she wallows in the past--visiting Martin, of course, but also poring over his paintings, smelling his shirts every day...still, six years on. (Though no expert in the patterns and longevity of grieving, this struck me while reading as not quite credible. And yet Jarvis is depressed and stuck, and so, I suppose, anything's possible.) Attenberg's narrative captures the period in Jarvis's life when events conspire to push her out of the holding pattern she's been mired in. Jarvis's story is told in the first person in languorous prose, glimpses of her past with Martin related in patches of back story that interrupt the description-rich narrative of the present. The sluggish rhythm of Jarvis's life is mirrored on the page, in the book's unusually long sentences--there's one that's 162 words long in chapter five--asides segregated from the main thrust of a sentence with dashes: Attenberg makes good use of her punctuational toolbox. (If I'm not mistaken, these long sentences becomes less frequent later in the book, as Jarvis's life itself picks up speed.) Jarvis is a complex, imperfect character. She was saved by her relationship with Martin from a life that was rootless and trivial. Having adopted an identity as his wife, who is she when he is gone, neither living nor dead? That's part of her problem. The Kept Man is not the lightest book, but it's not as depressing as the above probably suggests. A good--if not run-screaming-through-the-streets good--read. You're unlikely to be disappointed. -- Debra Hamel

I absolutely adore reading the craftwork of female novelists. In fact, I would much rather read a novel written by a female author than a male author. I spend enough time, troubled and otherwise, looking at the world through my male mind's eye. If I am going to spend good time and money on reading a novel, I want to be taken inside a heart-wrenching,thoroughly believable female mind's eye. I want to see the world, as recorded in that novel, through the eyes,intellect,passion,and intuition of a woman. (Maybe that knowledge will help me, oh, the next time I hit a road block next to a woman on a barstool in a tavern.) And of course, within the pages of the novel, I want to find ongoing developing reasons for falling in love with a female main character. Many talented female fiction purveyors can accomplish all that for me as a male reader. But here's my dilemma...I also need that female novelist to be adept enough to get me believing all her male characters are "real." The male characters have to convince me they are going through the story with an intuitively infallible male mind's eye. In my adult lifetime as a male reader, only Joan Didion, Nani Power, and now Jami Attenberg accomplish all that. If a line was up in Vegas, I would bet on The Kept Man as Book of the Year.

Jami Attenberg is a fantastic writer, one that I'm sure we'll be hearing about a lot in the next few years. Though I tend to gravitate toward more gritty stuff, I was completely taken with The Kept Man. I usually don't care much for novels set in big cities, but this one is a winner. Beautiful writing!

THE KEPT MAN is a beautiful book about love and loss, and how people find themselves stuck and immobile. Attenberg nails modern day Brooklyn, the concept of the proxy urban family, and the art world, and sucks you right in with her stunning prose. Her narrator is compelling and wonderfully flawed and complex, and I read late into the night, unable to put the book down. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!