Exiles
“[Exiles] reads like something out of Fitzgerald’sTender Is the Night. . . [Arlen] judges his parents; he judges himself, and does both with a wonderfully hard-won honesty . . . The great thing about Exiles is not what it reveals about either of the Michael Arlens but what it confirms about this author’s strange and eloquent style.” —Geoffrey Wolff,Time“One would be forgiven for wanting to read Exiles on the merit of its name-dropping glamour alone, even if glamour is only the tenth best thing about the book . . . It reveals the lives of three extraordinary people and it carries the author toward his soul’s interior, there to come to terms, both in his mind and in the reader’s, with the essential condition of being an exile.” —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt,The New York Times“[Exiles] is an impressionistic portrait of an emotional landscape, deftly drawn, striking in its imagery, and subtle in its suggestion of the disappointment and betrayal that ultimately blighted these lives. Arlen summons brilliant scenes that distill the unhappy way in which the past and the promise of the new malfunctioned.” —Katherine A. Powers,BostonGlobe