Percival Everett by Virgil Russell: A Novel
This new novel by the prolific and always inventive Everett will, with its odd title alone, bedevil librarians, booksellers, and bibliographers. It is, however, an innovative exploration of the outer limits of narrative ambiguity, and it’s also a deeply felt book about a father and son. Our initial narrator, visiting his elderly, invalided father, is handed an autobiographical manuscript presumably written by the elder “as if” the son had composed it, but even that narrative, this novel’s core, changes shape from segment to segment. Along the way, there are interpolations, dialogues, and speculations about narrative—for example, what if Nat Turner were to have written a memoir of William Styron?—as Everett proceeds, in his customary manner, to amuse and provoke his readers. An intriguing and intricate puzzle of a novel. --Mark Levine