Written in an urgent, percussive prose, it hurtles forward with the momentum of a rock thrown through a window. Opening with a barbed joke about drive-by shootings, No Lease on Life is punctuated with aggressive outbursts. From start to finish, the novel traverses anarchic territory - a dangerous, hilariously funny realm which exists beyond the margins of good manners and good taste. Jokes appear at irregular, measured intervals throughout the text, interrupting the flow of language like a rude remark blurted out, unexpectedly, at a cocktail party. Entertaining in themselves, the jokes accentuate the kinetic, jaunty rhythm of Tillman's writing.
Nothing is sacred.
As subject, Elizabeth Hall is porous and fragmented. It is also captivating. And in its own scrappy and pugnacious way, it's oddly charming. No one is spared from Elizabeth Hall's fierce, corrosive wit. The people she'd enjoy murdering are the loud-mouthed morons who create havoc, all night, on her East Village block.