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Summary
Summary
The dizzying new novel by Fiona Maazel, a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35"
* A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Kansas City Star, VICE, and Largehearted Boy Best Book of the Year * One of Book Riot 's "Seven Funniest Novels of 2013" *
* One of the Millions's Most Anticipated Books of 2013 * An April IndieNext Pick*
Thurlow Dan is the founder of the Helix, a cult that promises to cure loneliness in the twenty-first century. With its communes and speed-dating, mixers and confession sessions, the Helix has become a national phenomenon--and attracted the attention of governments worldwide. But Thurlow, camped out in his Cincinnati headquarters, is lonely--for his ex-wife, Esme, and their daughter, whom he hasn't seen in ten years.
Esme, for her part, is a covert agent who has spent her life spying on Thurlow, mostly to protect him from the law. Now, with her superiors demanding results, she recruits four misfits to botch a reconnaissance mission in Cincinnati. But when Thurlow takes them hostage, he ignites a siege of the Helix House that will change all their lives forever.
With fiery, exuberant prose, Fiona Maazel takes us on a wild ride through North Korea's guarded interior and a city of vice beneath Cincinnati, a ride that twists and turns as it delves into an unsettled, off-kilter America. Woke Up Lonely is an original and deeply funny novel that explores our very human impulse to seek and repel intimacy with the people who matter to us most.
Author Notes
Fiona Maazel is the author of Last Last Chance , called "moving, buoyant, and utterly true" by the New York Times Book Review . She is winner of the Bard Prize for Fiction, a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree, and the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Residency. Her work has appeared in BOMB , Bookforum , Conjunctions , Fence , GQ , Gulf Coast , Glamour , The Millions , Mississippi Review , n+1 , The New York Times , The New York Times Book Review , Salon , This American Life , Tin House , The Village Voice , The Yale Review , and elsewhere. She teaches at Brooklyn College and New York University, and was appointed the Picador Guest Professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany, for the spring of 2012. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Reviewed by Manuel Gonzales. Maazel's sprawling and ambitious new novel (after Last Chance) follows the rise and fall of the Helix, a cult of the lonely who believe that true human connection can only arrive with full disclosure. Think Facebook and Twitter but without the pesky computers. Speed dates, rallies, and confession sessions abound, full of strangers accosting one another to divulge their deepest secrets and most closely held fears, all in the hope of stemming the overwhelming tide of loneliness that is modern existence. Shifting between Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, Ohio, Maazel's novel pivots off the controversial 2000 presidential election, creating a fictional United States full of people ripe to band together in an ambiguous fight against loneliness and powerlessness. In the center of it all is Thurlow Dan, estranged from his wife and daughter, who began the Helix to fight his own solitude, but who, despite his hundreds of thousands of followers, remains the loneliest man on Earth. To make matters worse, branches of the Helix want armed revolution, the U.S. government has deemed Dan and the Helix public enemy number one, and in a desperate effort to win back Esme, his ex-wife, who is a covert CIA operative, Thurlow creates a hostage situation that threatens to bring everything tumbling down around him. Through all of this, Maazel casts herself into the lives of her characters, and it's through these interludes that the novel obtains most of its heart. Through characters like Ned, who loved his chair "as it did not love him," and Anne-Janet, survivor of cancer and sexual assault but forever alone and pining for love, Maazel mines disparate and singular modes of loneliness. At turns satiric and heartfelt, Maazel's novel brims with energy and life. Her wit is dark and acerbic, contrasting sharply against the over-indulgent, over-telling philosophy of the Helix. At times, however, the Helix itself, large and unwieldy and difficult to imagine, becomes an elaborate and somewhat unnecessary set piece that threatens to overshadow what's best about the novel and Maazel's skills as a storyteller, namely her exploration of the different shades of loneliness. As one character claims, "just because the energies of the lonely tended to mobilize in vigilant and constant pursuit of an end to loneliness, that did not make their aggregate any less lame," so, too, can the aggregate energies of Maazel feel somewhat misdirected when the novel returns its focus to the Helix. Regardless, Maazel manages to pair absurd situations and backgrounds with real fear and desire. Maazel shines when she backgrounds the Helix and the satiric elements of her story and penetrates the inner lives of her characters-Dan, Esme, their daughter, Ida, and four bumbling government agents-whose stories are rich and compelling. In those moments-and there are many of them-when she brings forward the doubts and faults of her characters, she shows these to be no less than our own, and then shows us, too, that their moments of triumph-however minor and fleeting, and no matter the obstacles that still stand in the way-can also be ours. Agent: Stacia Decker, Donald Maass Literary Agency. (Apr.) Manuel Gonzales is the author of The Miniature Wife and Other Stories. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
In this rollicking ride of a novel, Maazel explores a world of family, fame and forgiveness. One of the cures for "waking up lonely" is the Helix, sponsor of a number of services geared to help the legion of people experiencing loneliness in the 21st century. The founder of the Helix is Thurlow "Lo" Dan, whose mission has been to help those who feel companionless, though ironically, he's been feeling forsaken and isolated himself since the breakup of his marriage to Esme and his separation from his daughter, Ida. In one hilarious scene we learn of the Helix's strategy of "speed dating," in which potential partners come together for a few minutes to share a brief piece of who they are (responding to contrived prompts such as "My worst high school moment") in hopes of establishing a more lasting relationship. Despite such artificiality, the Helix has become something of a cult and is now drawing worldwide attention. Esme has been spying on Thurlow and comes up with a recon mission that, to say the least, devolves into a fiasco. In fact, he turns the tables on the motley group of operatives Esme has put together. In a number of touching flashbacks, we learn of the development of Lo and Esme's relationship. The narrative moves readers seamlessly from such unlikely places as the Helix's corporate headquarters in Cincinnati to the bleakness of North Korea. Maazel manages to strike a number of tones here--from poignant (all Lo wants is to get back with wife and daughter) to paranoid--and she's successful at every level.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
LONELINESS can be divided into two types: transient and chronic. The first is more common than the second, meaning most people feel lonely sometimes and some people feel lonely most of the time. Transients aren't interesting. Like hunger or fatigue, their loneliness comes and goes and isn't defining: talk to them for an hour and they forget it. Chronics, though, are another story. They feel lonely playing games and being with family and moving through crowds and having sex. They can rack up thousands of Facebook friends and build a nation of Twitter followers, and it doesn't matter. They know they are inescapably alone. There's a lot to be said for feeling this way - Schopenhauer noted that a man can be himself only when he is alone - but many of those who do wish they didn't. They try marriage, kids, religion, sports, alcohol and volunteering, but nothing works. They need a stronger tonic. Cue the Helix, a "therapeutic movement" at the heart of Fiona Maazel's frenetic, slippery new novel, "Woke Up Lonely." The Helix exists solely to rescue these people from their fortresses of solitude, and to deal with a problem its founder, Thurlow Dan, frames this way: "We are cocooned in all things, at all times, and it's only getting worse. Today we debrief with our pets and bed down with Internet porn. So what can we do?" The book is set in 2005, but its story begins a decade earlier, when 24-year-old Thurlow Dan runs into Esme Haas, the girl he had a crush on growing up. She asks him for directions to a restaurant and he falls madly in love with her all over again. That night they have bad sex. Nine months later they have a daughter. So they get married and live happily together until one day Esme takes their child and runs away because she loves Thurlow too much. Or because he's sleeping around. Or because she anticipates a conflict of interest. Or because - oh, reason not the need, it's complicated. Thurlow is devastated. While pining for his wife and daughter to return, he deals with his grief by building the Helix into a national association with an iconic spiral logo and bold, mysterious plans for the future. Like a higher profile Landmark Forum or the Work of Byron Katie, the Helix promises to liberate its followers from the tyranny of their own heads and to provide them with a vibrant community for sharing and enjoying this new freedom. Naturally, it looks like a cult to some outsiders, including the feds, even though it doesn't take its members' money or force them to cut off ties with friends and family. Nor does Thurlow Dan claim to be a divine figure, like Jim Jones or David Koresh, but rather an ordinary guy delivering a resonant message: "A lot of people think solitude comes from a deep need attached in our social history to the dread of convention. Or even just the dread of belonging. How can I belong? I live in darker registers of inquiry and feeling than anyone else on earth. Does that sound familiar?" Because of Jonestown and Waco, and because of rumors that the Helix is stockpiling guns and talking to North Korea, "the most isolated, radically autonomous and lonely community of millions on earth," the government assigns an agent to report on Thurlow's every move. This agent happens to be his estranged wife, Esme. In order to be near him without his recognizing her, she wears different disguises - the most amazing of which is her impersonation of a Kim Jong-il impersonator - until the novel's opening scene, when she meets him in a Washington Laundromat to warn him that the government is getting ready to crack down on his operation. This is a restless book. It bounces between Thurlow and Esme and a group of peripheral characters, from the capital to upstate New York to Pyongyang to Cincinnati, and from Helix rallies to a secret forest mansion to an underground city. The story moves quickly - with trap doors and trick windows - and presents the plausible and the ridiculous with the same wild-eyed expression. Like her debut, "Last Last Chance," Maazel's new novel sounds like an AM radio dial spinning between the spooky midnight frequency of "V." and the bizarro breakfast show humor of "White Noise," while every now and then it offers reality TV gimmicks (there's an absurd Tyra Banks-style fat suit sequence) and a network rendition of counterterrorism that's more "24" than "Homeland." It's a smart but often unconvincing "if I talk fast enough maybe its moving parts will mesh" sort of book. I love its premise, though, which is intricately imagined and timely. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 20 percent of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated - the so-called "nones" - and surely as many people would describe themselves as lonely, so there's an awful logic to the idea of a new popular movement centering on our psychological rather than our spiritual well-being. We're at a strange moment in history. The average Facebook user has 245 friends, yet Robert Putnam's handwringing study of our social disconnection, "Bowling Alone," resonates as loudly as when it came out 13 years ago. SO it's unfortunate that "Woke Up Lonely" eventually drifts away from looking at this paradox and becomes a farce about thinly drawn characters living through the Helix's last days. The novel's concentration on a married couple moving between attraction and repulsion, and on an organization that would ve put Nathanaei West's Miss Lonelyhearts out of business, gets diluted until it finally dissolves into a madcap soup of unimportant scenes involving people who are more collections of quirks than of human qualities. Still, Maazel is an entertaining writer with a dry, droll sense of humor - the book is full of lines like these: "He was missing fingers that mattered for making a good impression," and "possibly the greatest and most counterintuitive pleasure on earth, carrot cake" - and through all the chaos and flightiness of her story, she's insightful about how and why we build up instead of tear down the walls between us. Kurt Vonnegut once asked: "What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured." He shows up here as one character's driving obsession, and his spirit animates the most inspired affectionate cynicism in "Woke Up Lonely." The religion he invented for 1963's "Cat's Cradle," Bokononism, was a warmed-over Buddhism that helped its practitioners forgive - or at least tolerate - life's absurdities, and it was in tune with the cold war dangers of its time. I wish the Helix and its surrounding novel had paid more attention to the emotional and spiritual threats facing us today, and less to its precursor's mantra: "Busy, busy, busy." The author spins between the spooky midnight frequency of 'V.' and the bizarro humor of 'White Noise.' Josh Emmons's most recent novel is "Prescription for a Superior Existence."
Library Journal Review
Set in the grim near future, this dystopian novel from the author of Last Last Chance features Thurlow Dan, who is the founder and leader of the Helix, an international Scientology-like cult with headquarters in an underground city beneath Cincinnati. His ex-wife, Esme, is a covert spy with a penchant for disguises. The intricate plot culminates in a botched kidnapping and a siege of Helix House. North Korea figures prominently, too. But at the heart of the story is something more simple: Thurlow's loneliness and longing for Esme and their young daughter, Ida. VERDICT Maazel's wildly imaginative style isn't for everyone, and her humor may be lost on many readers. But this ambitious, wide-ranging novel should appeal to those who enjoy complex, edgy, and ironic literary fiction.-Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
