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Like Nabokov's Lolita, Allan Stein depicts human sexuality in a way that is as captivating as it is disturbing. But the pedophiliac element--and its graphic manifestations--should not necessarily frighten readers away. Matthew Stadler's ornate, twisting sentences show strong sensitivity to place and setting, whether he's describing the streets of Paris, the French countryside, or a cluttered bar in Seattle. There's also a strong undercurrent of ironic humor, particularly in the exchanges between the narrator and the real Herbert and in the narrator's memories of adventures shared as a boy with his mother. Allan Stein is a book (and Matthew Stadler an author) one might be tempted to ignore as "difficult." In doing so, however, one would be overlooking a unique gem. --Ron Hogan
After some convincing, Herbert allows his troubled friend to go in his place, using his own name and passport. In Paris "Herbert" discovers an unusual family that welcomes him, and he becomes enchanted by one particular family member, a fifteen-year-old boy named Stphane. As he unravels the gilded but sad childhood of Allan Stein, "Herbert" is haunted by memories of his own boyhood, particularly his odd, flamboyant mother. Moving through the glitter and pomp of the Parisian art world, he becomes more and more entangled in his masquerade and finds himself increasingly bedeviled by his feelings for Stphane, with whom he ultimately absconds to the south of France. Moving from the late twentieth century back to the 1900s, effortlessly blending fact and fiction, Allan Stein is a charged exploration of eroticism, obsession, and identity.
Matthew Stadler's three previous novels, Landscape: Memory, The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee, and The Sex Offender, have earned him Guggenheim and Ingram-Merrill fellowships and a Whiting Writer's Award. He is the literary editor of Nest magazine and senior writer for The Stranger. He lives in Seattle.
"What makes Allan Stein unusual is the lyric suppleness and restraint of the writing. . . . Stadler demonstrates that is among the handful of first-rate young American novelists, one with a wide reach and quirky, elegant pen. The writing and the composition of this evocation of the Paris cityscape and its seductive denizens are remarkable"-Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review"
"Allan Stein has the qualities of the sublime. Not the diluted modern sense of the word, but in its older combination of beauty and menace, fascination and dread. . . . A novel of extraordinary imagination and beauty."-John Perry, The San Francisco Chronicle
"Stadler's broad scope encompasses family life, desire, and concepts of gayness. Allan Stein delicately traces the commerce between manhood and boyhood, in the mid and in the flesh, while meandering through space and history."-Hugh Rowland, The Bay Guardian
"Beautifully written . . . dazzling prose . . . Mathew's dangerously romanticized view of the relationship, Europe, and the elusive Allan Stein gives the novel its uneasy charm."-Hugh Garvey, The Village Voice Literary Supplement
"Matthew Stadler has perfect pitch. Allan Stein sings with the same lucid prose that graced his previous works. . . . Stadler's clear writing carries a story about one of our grittier taboos; adult male sexual desire for teenage boys. The book succeeds in its exploration of such controversial content in large part because of Stadler's elegant writing and unrelenting candor."-Judy Doenges, The Seattle Times
"Allan Stein is gorgeously written, but it's a host of other things as well: smart, brave, funny, and sexy. It's the kind of novel that makes you glad that you are alive and reading. It makes you happy that Matthew Stadler is alive and writing."-Peter Cameron
"The sentences stopped me in my tracks and made me catch my breath. A beautiful, sad, and creepy book."-Rebecca Brown
"A brilliant kaleidoscope. His finest and most entertaining novel."-James Purdy
"Erotic and sensuous at the same time, lovingly attentive to detail and permeated with Nabokovian grace and intelligence . . . A pleasure from start to finish."-Lydia Davis
"Matthew Stadler is among the foremost gifted, vigorous, and original novelists of our time. His new novel, Allan Stein, is as shapely as Henry James and far outdoes Nabokov in erotic realism."-Guy Davenport
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