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Invisible Mending: A Novel A Novel by Frederick Busch |
"Robust, witty, heartwarming and believable. . . . A satisfyingly mature novel that’s great fun to read."—Newsday"Forty years old, separated from his wife and son, torn by memories of a previous lover, Zimmer suffers from a classic case of Portnoy’s complaint. Pleasure begets guilt; guilt begets self-consciousness; and, for Zimmer, self-consciousness begets misery (for himself and those around him). Busch tells Zimmer’s story in the first person, skillfully interlocking flashbacks that relive the hapless hero’s agonized love life, which takes place against the vividly realized backdrop of New York City from the early 1960s to the present. First it is Rhona Glinsky berating Zimmer for his unorthodox Jewish upbringing (and offering her love in exchange for his rediscovering religion); then it is Lillian, Zimmer’s blond, midwestern wife, chiding him for being totally self-absorbed; and finally there is his eight-year-old son, Sam, plaintively demanding to know when Daddy is coming home to stay. . . . [Zimmer’s] heartfelt and often hilarious bumblings on the road to intimacy are genuinely touching."—Booklist"A clever, touching and very funny novel. . . . Told with rare charm and narrative dazzle."—Boston Globe
"An exhilarating experience . . . with characters who leap off the page and into the reader’s heart."—Publishers Weekly
Invisible Mending is Busch’s meditation—half-comic, half-serious—on the topic of Jewish identity and consciousness, an ambitious grapple with the New York/Jewish ethos. First published in 1984 by David R. Godine, the novel was the winner of that year’s National Jewish Book Award for fiction.
"A heartfelt and hilarious novel of modern love . . . beautifully constructed and richly textured."—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"Busch brings to writing a driving emotional intensity and a passion for accurately observed detail . . . for which few contemporary writers seem to have either the energy or the innocence."— Chicago Tribune Book World
"Invisible Mending has some interesting things to say about the lunatic fringes of love. While Busch offers us a hero who would try the patience of the American Civil Liberties Union, his book manages at the same time to be funny, sad, possibly true."—New York Times
FREDERICK BUSCH is Fairchild Professor of Literature at Colgate University, where he teaches fiction and creative writing and conducts the Living Writers course. In 1991 he received the PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction. A well-known critic and reviewer, he is the author of twenty books, eighteen of them fiction—most recently a novel, Girls, published by Harmony Books. He has been acting director of the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and has held Woodrow Wilson, National Endowment for the Arts, James Merrill, and Guggenheim Fellowships. He lives with his wife, Judy, in Sherburne, New York, in a rambling nineteenth-century farmhouse. The Busches have two grown sons.
Invisible Mending: A Novel
ISBN 0-87074-417-8 paper $12.95
5 1/2x8. 296 pp.
Fiction.
Publication Date: April 1997.
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