The New Yorker
In Leebron's fast-paced third novel, a young woman dying of cancer is caught between the competing desires of her brother Martin, a small-town college professor who is unable to let go, and her New Age husband, who does nothing to hold on. The end of the story is never in doubt, but as we follow Martin through his emotional blunders, his alcoholic benders, and his struggles to keep his own family intact, we get a sense of what it's like to be diminished rather than strengthened by life's challenges. Leebron's sharp, insightful prose gives us the mundane specifics without ever losing track of the bigger questions -- of generosity and guilt, familial love and regret.
Publishers Weekly
This third novel by Leebron (Out West; Six Figures) tells the story of Martin Kreutzel, an anthropology professor at a small Pennsylvania college. Happily married and the father of two children, Martin watches his life collapse around him when he learns that his beloved sister, Elizabeth, is ill with cancer. Suddenly, Martin, the scientist whose preferred method is that of the "observer-participant," can neither observe nor participate, unable to cope with his sister's imminent death, unable to decide "whether mercy meant denial or acceptance." When his sister's husband, Richard, disappears, Martin flies to London to be with Elizabeth, leaving behind a house falling apart and a college struck by a series of tragedies. Shortly after Martin's arrival, Richard mysteriously returns and whisks Elizabeth off to an undisclosed location, leaving Martin in an empty house, futilely awaiting their return. In his sister's absence, Martin must learn to accept not only the loss of her life but the validity of his. Leebron tells most of his open-ended story from Martin's viewpoint, providing an uneasy glimpse into the psyche of a man torn apart, a man forced to acknowledge grim realities and to realize that "life in the middle of all this" meant that "life was the middle of all this." Leebron's exceptional skills as a storyteller and observer of humanity produce a novel both tremendously enjoyable and grandly poignant, a novel almost anthropological in its keen examination of man's fate. Agent, Amanda Urban. (Aug.) Forecast: Leebron has yet to achieve the readership of comparable writers like Richard Ford or Raymond Carver, but this novel should give him a modest boost. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Leebron's new work is being compared to works by Richard Ford and Raymond Carver, though he may be more reminiscent of the former than the latter. His third novel (after Out West and Six Figures) focuses on a man caught in strong, eddying currents who seems to want to control them but cannot and must either make a separate peace or be drawn under. Martin Kreutzel teaches college in a small Pennsylvania town, where his house is leaking, his children seem to be normal, and his colleagues are facing such vicissitudes as a spouse's substance abuse and a student's suicide. His main concern at the moment is his London-based sister, Elizabeth, a vigorous woman who is dying of cancer. When Elizabeth's husband disappears for a few days, Martin rushes to London to be with her. After Martin returns home, Elizabeth herself disappears, presumably to make her own peace with her foreshortened future. Leebron is an engaging writer, and it remains to be seen if he will find a larger audience. Recommended for literary fiction collections.-Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Another polished, obliquely emotional rendering from literary darling Leebron (Six Figures, 2000), this about a tight, long-distance sister-brother relationship ruptured by illness and regret. A year at a tenure-track position in the anthropology department of Lincoln College, Alabama, has wrought disaster for 38-year-old Martin Kreutzel: in addition to the personal persecution he's undergone at the college, he has recently absorbed the shattering news that his beloved older sister, Elizabeth, has been diagnosed with 40 tumors on her spine. Elizabeth, seemingly healthful, lives prosperously with her New Age-y husband, Richard, in London, though without children; the least Martin and his wife Lauren, also a teacher at Lincoln, can do is try to have their baby for them, despite the two children Martin and Lauren already have who demand their thinning attention. Yet when in-vitro fertilization fails and Elizabeth's prognosis grows increasingly bleak, so do Martin's prospects at the school, where yet another student plunges into personal tragedy as Martin must shuttle back and forth to London to assuage Elizabeth's fears of dying. Leebron works through incrementally shifting points of view to build suspense and sympathy for his richly delineated characters, especially Elizabeth, who suffers from insidious pain and will try any form of alternative or goofy treatment to get better. Yet, overall, the novel feels incomplete, as if the author ran out of possible denouements and lost touch with his characters: the reader gains no sense of Martin's teaching or anthropological knowledge, despite his breast-beating and guilt, or what Elizabeth and Richard have gained from the alternative sources ofhealing that eventually subsume them. Tight dialogue and suspenseful accretion can't disguise a certain lackadaisical quality.
