The Lucky Star: A Novel

by William T. Vollmann

Overview

The National Book Award winning author returns to his original fictional territory—the lives of the dispossessed in San Francisco—with a parable about the limitations of desire and life at the margins of society

In such earlier works of fiction as The Rainbow Stories and The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann wrote of pimps, prostitutes, addicts and homeless dreamers in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. In this new novel, Vollmann returns there with a story that centers around a woman with magical powers whom everyone loves, and who has to love them all back.

After being initiated into a coven of island witches, Neva begins to fulfill her fate in a Tenderloin dive bar. Her worshippers include Richard, the introverted, alcoholic, occasionally omniscient narrator; a profane, aggressive transgender sex worker named Shantelle; the brisk but motherly barmaid Francine; and the former Frank, who has renamed herself after her idol Judy Garland. When Judy starts to love Neva too much, Judy's retired policeman boyfriend embarks on a mission of exposure and destruction.

Crafted out of language by turns spiritual and sexually graphic, The Lucky Star aches with compassion as it explores celebrity culture, gender identity, incest, Christian sacrifice and, most of all, the quotidian and sometimes faltering hero'sm of marginalized people who in the face of humiliation and outright violence seek to love in their own way, and stand up for who they are.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399563522
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/18/2020
Pages:	672
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

William T. Vollmann is the author of ten novels, including Whores for Gloria, The Royal Family,and Europe Central, which won the National Book Award. He has also written four collections of stories (including The Rainbow Stories and The Atlas, which won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction), a memoir, and eight works of nonfiction, including Rising Up and Rising Down and Imperial, both of which were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in California.

Hometown:

Sacramento, California

Date of Birth:

July 28, 1959

Place of Birth:

Santa Monica, California

Education:

Attended Deep Springs College and Cornell University

Editorial Reviews

12/09/2019

Vollmann’s sprawling and provocatively playful novel revisits the sordid setting of his early collection The Rainbow Stories, where sexual desire shapes characters’ self-expression and pursuit of love, power, and human connection. A circle of friends is bonded by their relationship to a character named Neva, often referred to as “the lesbian.” They meet at a San Francisco spot called the Y Bar in 2015, where they find support in their collective company and become a de facto family. Among them are the matriarch, a bartender named Francine; Shantelle, a transgender prostitute; the largely unnoticed hard-drinking barfly Richard, who provides florid narration; and the starry-eyed Frank, who has renamed himself after his icon, Judy Garland. Vollmann elaborately researched the tumultuous life of the real Garland, lending passion and credence to Richard’s extensive knowledge of the late singer. As Neva evolves from an innocent to an icon on par with Marlene Dietrich, at least in the eyes of the Y Bar circle, she guides and mentors their sexual self-discovery, helping define their boundaries and gain confidence. The Y Bar crowd’s otherwise static plotlines are tightened by the interweaving of their common experiences. Vollmann’s challenging novel is full of memorable moments. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Lucky Star:

“[A] glorious ode to community . . . in everything [Vollmann] writes, he is concerned with the ways people strive to be better than the world that contains them . . . [The Lucky Star] develops a powerful sense of human life and its elemental pleasures.” —Los Angeles Times 

“[A] documentary accounting of life on the margins, riffing on such themes as bigotry, idolatry, gender fluidity, vulnerability, consent, resilience and love . . . The Lucky Star is gilded with the signature Vollmann brew of erudition, irony, mysticism and banality . . . Vollmann’s prose can be evocative and deliciously incisive.” —The New York Times Book Review 

“Vollmann takes us back to the San Francisco of his early fiction, to the haunts of those who will live and die on the city’s margins . . . For all the contemporaneity in the telling, there is (as always) a certain moral quality to Vollmann’s work. In this one: there is no one on earth, no one, who would not benefit from a little more love and a lot less contempt.” —The Millions, “Most Anticipated 2020”

“This big, underwater-lit novel returns Vollmann’s work to the dive bars and gender-fluid clubs of San Francisco . . . Vollmann admirably captures the pull of vulnerability and invention, how sex can be, in the right space, a powerful way to know one’s self, and ultimately, how much each of his characters here needs a space to be themselves.” —Lit Hub, “Most Anticipated 2020”

“In the first few years of his career, William Vollmann created a paradigm shift in literary fiction; that is, he changed what was possible to do in that form.  He did so in many dimensions, giving him a reputation for epic excess.  One forgets that he also has the skills of a miniaturist.  The French poet Le Comte de Lautréamont would have called The Lucky Star a pavé.  Vollmann said in the 1980s that he’d learned from Les Chants de Maldoror to get remarkable effects in very brief passages, by working the language as hard as can be, like a smith heating metal to a malleable temperature.  He hasn’t forgotten how to do it; and you will see plenty of it here.” —Madison Smartt Bell

“[A] provocatively playful novel . . . As Neva evolves from an innocent to an icon on par with Marlene Dietrich, at least in the eyes of the Y Bar circle, she guides and mentors their sexual self-discovery, helping define their boundaries and gain confidence . . . Vollmann’s challenging novel is full of memorable moments.” —Publishers Weekly

“Vollmann pours his signature fascination with outcasts, women's sexuality, violence, and injustice into this gargantuan, omnivorously explicit, ravening orgy of trauma and resilience. Rooted in interviews with women survivors, this is a molten amalgam of cynicism and compassion, horror and beauty.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

04/01/2020

This latest from Vollman (Europe Central) reflects the author's dark view of humanity but also manages to reflect some light. Told from the point of view of a straight male narrator, the book revolves around Neva, called "the lesbian" throughout the tale, and the myriad characters, gay, straight, male, female, cisgender, and transgender, whom she loves and who love her. Neva is a regular at a dive bar in San Francisco's Tenderloin who retains a magical youth, a bottomless purse, and the ability to selflessly love anyone and everyone. The characters who inhabit the bar include transvestite Judy, retired policeman J.D., streetwalker Shantelle, and many more. The narrative describes countless sex acts in exquisite detail, drugs galore, and multiple drinks priced, purchased, and consumed. While the characters struggle with Neva's unconditional love, the plight of each becomes magnified. The suspicious nature of the retired policeman helps shine narrative light on Neva's origins. As Neva's world of unconditional love begins to crumble, she recedes and her loss becomes paramount. VERDICT This novel is premised on a powerful notion of a love magic that is severely tested in a laboratory of desperate human desire; highly recommended for those who like the scenic route home.—Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Library Journal