What if somebody finally wrote to his high school alumni bulletin and told...the truth! Here is an update from hell, a brilliant work from novelist Sam Lipsyte, whom Jeffrey Eugenides calls "original, devious, and very funny" and of whose first novel Chuck Palahniuk wrote, "I laughed out loud---and I never laugh out loud."
The Eastern Valley High School Alumni newsletter, Catamount Notes, is bursting with tales of success: former students include a bankable politician and a famous baseball star, not to mention a major-label recording artist. Then there is the appalling, yet utterly lovable, Lewis Miner, class of '89---a.k.a Teabag---who did not pan out. Home Land is his confession in all its bitter, lovelorn glory.
"Genius. As eloquent and delirious a rant I've heard since Henry Miller was doing the ranting. Sam Lipsyte has the best male gaze in town and when he turns that gaze inwards I start to understand how we got to be where we are today, as a country and as a people."
Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook
"Lipsyte is playful and lewd, bleak and farcical, walking a fine line between near-glib humour and a genuine existential fear one could even call Beckettian. . . . Sam Lipsyte can really write."
Aida Edamariam, The Guardian
"Lipsyte's vision of our collective existence is so accurately skewed, there is no escaping the delirious---and beautifully disturbing---shock of recognition. Writing this deep is rare enough---writing this deep and this hysterical pretty much didn't exist until Lipsyte began pouring it onto the page."
