Last Resort by Andrew Lipstein

 

Caleb knows he should be an author.  He is so sure that he quits a good job in New York and moves to Florida to write.  While there, he meets a woman and becomes engaged.  But after a year, he decides that he won't get his writing done in Florida and breaks his engagement and rents a room in Oregon.  On his way across country, he stops overnight with a former classmate from college, Avi.  After spilling his sad story about his broken engagement, Avi tells him his own story.  He had gone to a Greek island for a short vacation, gotten stranded on another island with a woman he had met the night before and another couple.  That night the four engaged in an orgy and afterwards, he never saw any of them again.

Caleb gets to Oregon and starts writing.  He isn't sure what he wants to write about and as an exercise, he starts to write Avi's story.  Soon he is entranced with what he is writing and the words pour forth.  He finishes the book, sends it out to agents and goes back to New York and another job.  Caleb is stunned when the book is taken immediately and even more when he hears the amount of money being offered.  But Avi is also in New York and finds that his story is the basis of Caleb's book.  He threatens to sue and the book ends up being published with Avi as author and Caleb getting all the money.  

This is a debut book and received much praise from publications such as Slate, the New York Times, Vulture and the New Yorker.  For me, the first half of the book was a definite win.  The story of Caleb and Avi and how the book came to be was fascinating.  The rest of the book was less successful.  Caleb starts to roam from one life to another.  He forces the publicity of being the real author, then starts teaching in a small college.  He breaks up with the woman he thought he loved and soon is dating another at the college.  He gets back together with Sandra and then meets the woman from the book and hares off to Australia to be with her.  Caleb drifts from vocation to vocation and from woman to woman and this part of the book diluted the interest from the first part.  I listened to this book and the narrator did an excellent job displaying the back and forths of the main character, Caleb.  I'll be interested to see what the author's second book, The Vegan, is like and plan to read it.  This novel is recommended for readers of literary fiction.