He is drawn to the concept of mazes, nonetheless. Lost is not necessarily a bad way to be in Larry's estimation. The secret of navigating through life, Larry suspects, may not be unlike that of navigating through a maze, where one fares best, he has learned, by surrendering to the mystery of the labyrinth and by, on occasion, turning away from the goal. Shields is one of those rare writers who breaks the conventional rules of fiction writing and wins acclaim for it. It is all a rather witty and yet poignantly innovative attempt to get to the root of what it means to be a man in an age of changing gender expectations and changing norms.
Shields works exquisitely with the notion of the maze as metaphor.
Not only does Larry wander his own dizzyingly blind path in search of himself, but the writing itself continually twists and turns back on itself, often repeating in one chapter information already provided in another, adding new weight and more nuance with each repeating. Shields' sparing use of scene-development then works powerfully to provide little explosions of revelation, almost the way you might suddenly round a corner in a maze and know kinesthetically that you are on the right path. There is, for instance, the moment at Larry's 16th high school reunion when the formerly lovely Nancy Oleson tipsily tells off the still lovely, still obnoxious Megsy Hicks, and then turns for approval to the formerly nerdy Larry Weller, whom she has just admitted she once secretly loved. It is a beautifully rendered scene in any event, but nothing less than brilliant coming on the heels of Larry's long internal ruminations about his own humiliating adolescent panics and secret crushes. Against a flurry of dazzling, fast-paced dialogue, Larry at last unravels the puzzle of his life and discovers the prize at the heart of the maze.