Date: May 12th 2008

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"Evison's debut—of love and loss, growing up, throwing up and moving on—is a stunner. William Miller Jr. is a scrawny loner whose mother dies of cancer when he is seven years old, leaving him an awkward vegetarian with an ominously macho father and idiot twin brothers in mid-1970s Santa Monica. William's father, Big Bill, remarries a grief counselor named Willow, and Will spends the following decades in love with Louisa (Lulu, as she prefers to be called), his new stepsister. They are close throughout adolescence, but after a summer at cheerleading camp, Lulu returns home distant and hostile, leaving Will to pine for her in solitary desperation. Will finally appears to be on the path to normalcy in the early 1990s when he lucks into a radio talk-show hosting gig, but the stroke of good fortune is short-lived, as he discovers things about Lulu he'd rather not know. Evison provides readers a viciously funny and deeply felt portrayal of a blended family and one man's thwarted lo
nging. (July)"--Publishers Weekly, starred

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A freakishly charming tale of star-crossed, would-be stepsibling love in a family of failed bodybuilders in suburban Los Angeles.

In All About Lulu (Soft Skull; Trade Paper Original; July 25th, 2008; $14.95; 978-1-59376-196-7) William Miller--confirmed mamma’s boy and weak-eyed vegetarian in a family of bodybuilders--learns at a tender age what amounts to the Cartesian dictum for bodybuilders everywhere: no pain, no gain. I hurt, therefore I am--words he learns to live by in the wake of his mother’s death. When his father remarries a relentlessly kind grief counselor, Will falls in love with his troubled stepsister, Lulu. But as Lulu’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic and inexplicably cruel, Will’s sense of identity begins to founder. Knowing that he can never hold the key to Lulu’s heart, Will only clings harder until his unwanted affection drives Lulu into a pattern of self-destruction that follows her into adolescence.

Lulu’s departure to college marks for Will the beginning of a personal odyssey which includes a crash course in western philosophy, a series of epic bad dates, and the enduring friendship of a poultry-obsessed former Soviet wrestler turned free-market capitalist, with whom he establishes Hot Dog Heaven on the Venice Beach Boardwalk. Working nights as a producer at the college station, Will catches a break one night when the overnight host eats bad razor clams, forcing him to take the mic without warning, where his performance catches the ear of the program director. In a world made of meat, a world where the corporeal is everything and identity is measured in mounds of flesh and striated muscle, Will discovers his strength in the disembodied voice of his late-night radio persona.

But when Lulu self-destructs, William is drawn back into her life, and ultimately discovers that Lulu was never who he believed her to be.

PRAISE FOR ALL ABOUT LULU

"The star-crossed lovers at the center of All About Lulu forge a middle ground between Archie and Veronica and Kurt and Courtney. Evison has delivered a witty, understated, heartfelt, and, at times, almost unnervingly honest debut."--Adam Langer, author of Crossing California

"Jonathan Evison is a killer talent, and All About Lulu is the kind of novel readers have been hungry for: funny, smart, entertaining—an all around delight. Literary fiction needs more books like this; maybe then people would stop talking about the Death of the Novel and just read and enjoy themselves."--Darin Strauss

"All About Lulu is an exhilarating, wholly original and brave novel about obsession, love and becoming. With Will Miller Evison has created a thoroughly modern protagonist steeped in Dickensian complexity, pure yet conflicted, lost yet driven to find truth in the dysfunctional American abyss."--James P. Othmer, author of The Futurist

"All About Lulu is a novel of tremendous energy and heartbreaking, hilarious insight, a novel with a heart of gold. In a manner that is both breathless and effortless, Evison reminds us of life’s beautiful oddity. A remarkable debut."--Brad Listi, author of Attention Deficit Disorder

All About Lulu is a fascinating meditation on growing up and growing inward, a wry portrait of the American family in all its excessive, dysfunctional, heartbreaking purity."--Josh Emmons, author of The Loss of Leon Meed

Evison keeps all kinds of balls up in the air, seemingly without effort. All About Lulu is the happiest sad story around, a meditation on the meaning of family, and how we fit amongst the people we love and misunderstand.--Greg Downs, author of Spit Baths

About the Author:
Jonathan Evison has worked a wide array of jobs from syndicated talk radio host to rotten tomato sorter—in the former role, his comedy show, Shaken Not Stirred, was nominated for two Peabody Awards. He has received two Silver Microphones and two Communicators and was frequently nominated for the Soundie Award. This is his first novel. He resides in Bainbridge Island, WA.


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