Fault Line (American Lives) - Hardcover

Alberts, Laurie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803210655 ISBN 13: 9780803210653

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2004

Synopsis

In 1969 Kim Janik was a young man shining with promise—handsome, brilliant, studying at Harvard on a physics scholarship—and he was in love with Laurie Alberts, a troubled teenager from a wealthy Boston suburb. Twenty-five years later, when Kim’s naked and decomposing body was discovered on the Wyoming prairie, one photograph—that of the Harvard junior and the seventeen-year-old—was found in his abandoned car. This book is Alberts’s attempt to piece together what happened in between. An accomplished novelist, Alberts brings to her task the searching intelligence, clear-eyed candor, and narrative grace that have marked her previous books. She painstakingly recreates her turbulent relationship with Kim and traces the twisted course that led to his eventual ruin.

A story of obsessive love, societal upheaval, and the warring impulses of survival and self-destruction, Fault Line moves beyond the limits of the traditional memoir into the realms of biography and literary journalism. With interviews and letters, Alberts augments her lucid reflections in an effort to comprehend Kim’s life and death and her place in both. The result is a singular work that melds the inner and outer worlds with a seamless intensity.

About this title

About the Authors

Laurie Alberts teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at Vermont College's MFA in Writing Program.

Laurie Alberts, author of the novels The Price of Land in Shelby, Lost Daughters, and Tempting Fate, teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at Vermont College’s MFA in Writing Program.

From the Inside Flap

In 1969 Kim Janik was a young man shining with promise handsome, brilliant, studying at Harvard on a physics scholarship and he was in love with Laurie Alberts, a troubled teenager from a wealthy Boston suburb. Twenty-five years later, when Kim s naked and decomposing body was discovered on the Wyoming prairie, one photograph that of the Harvard junior and the seventeen-year-old was found in his abandoned car. This book is Alberts s attempt to piece together what happened in between. An accomplished novelist, Alberts brings to her task the searching intelligence, clear-eyed candor, and narrative grace that have marked her previous books. She painstakingly recreates her turbulent relationship with Kim and traces the twisted course that led to his eventual ruin.

A story of obsessive love, societal upheaval, and the warring impulses of survival and self-destruction, Fault Line moves beyond the limits of the traditional memoir into the realms of biography and literary journalism. With interviews and letters, Alberts augments her lucid reflections in an effort to comprehend Kim s life and death and her place in both. The result is a singular work that melds the inner and outer worlds with a seamless intensity.

Reviews

In this latest entry in the American Lives series, novelist Alberts (The Price of Land in Shelby, 1996) writes a candid, self-lacerating memoir about her first love. She met Kim Janek in 1969 when he was a brilliant student attending Harvard on a physics scholarship, and she was a 17-year-old high-school student. Twenty-five years later, Kim's nude and decomposing body was discovered by a rancher on the Wyoming prairie. Among his few possessions was a photograph of the two of them. Although Alberts had not spoken to him in years, she was inconsolable at the news of his death. This memoir is her attempt to find out what happened to him, for she carries a deep fear that she is the one who destroyed him. A central paradox at the core of the narrative is that Alberts is no longer the impulsive, reckless teenager who embarked on that tumultuous relationship. She warns readers: "I knew Kim better than anyone; I was incapable of knowing Kim." A thoughtful, wrenching portrait of obsessive love. Joanne Wilkinson
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803210655
• ISBN 13: 9780803210653
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160