 | |
| Author | Jonathan Evison |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Soft Skull Press |
Publication date | 2008 July 21 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 344 pp |
| ISBN | 978-1-59376-196-7 |
| OCLC | 181517136 |
| 813/.6 22 | |
| LC Class | PS3605.V57 A795 2008 |
All About Lulu is a coming-of-age novel by American author Jonathan Evison published in 2008. [1] The novel revolves around a family of bodybuilders in Santa Monica from the Summer of Love to the Dot-com bubble.
In the wake of his mother's death, as his bodybuilding brethren pump themselves to Hulkish proportions, weak-eyed vegetarian Will Miller stops growing altogether—until the day his father remarries a relentlessly kind grief counselor, delivering Will a troubled stepsister who soon becomes his confessor, companion, and heart's only desire. But when Lulu returns from cheerleading camp the summer of her fourteenth year, she inexplicably begins to push Will away, forcing him to look elsewhere for meaning.
Major themes in All About Lulu include self-improvement, family, unrequited love, obsession, the American dream, talk radio, and meat.
All About Lulu received a starred review in Publishers Weekly (5/12/08), who called the book “a stunner—viciously funny and deeply felt.” In subsequent reviews, including the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Seattle P.I., the novel was compared both favorably and unfavorably to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye , and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita . In addition to being selected for the Los Angeles Times and Seattle PI summer reading lists, All About Lulu was selected for numerous year-end "Top 10" and "Best of" lists, including Hudson, and Time Out Chicago, and won the 2009 Washington State Book Award. [2]
The Pulitzer Prize for Criticism has been presented since 1970 to a newspaper writer in the United States who has demonstrated 'distinguished criticism'. Recipients of the award are chosen by an independent board and officially administered by Columbia University. The Pulitzer Committee issues an official citation explaining the reasons for the award.
Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel The Corrections drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His novel Freedom (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". Franzen's latest novel Crossroads was published in 2021, and is the first in a projected trilogy.
Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. He published his first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, in 1976. His breakout collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), received immediate acclaim and established Carver as an important figure in the literary world. It was followed by Cathedral (1983), which Carver considered his watershed and is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The definitive collection of his stories, Where I'm Calling From, was published shortly before his death in 1988. In their 1989 nomination of Carver for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the jury concluded, "The revival in recent years of the short story is attributable in great measure to Carver's mastery of the form."
Life of Pi is a Canadian philosophical novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist is Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, India, who explores issues of spirituality and metaphysics from an early age. After a shipwreck, he survives 227 days while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger, raising questions about the nature of reality and how it is perceived and told.
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College.
Evan Shelby Connell Jr. was a U.S. novelist, short-story writer, essayist and author of epic historical works. He also published under the name Evan S. Connell Jr.
Bruce Conner was an American artist who worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography.
Paula Fox was an American author of novels for adults and children and of two memoirs. For her contributions as a children's writer she won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978, the highest international recognition for a creator of children's books. She also won several awards for particular children's books including the 1974 Newbery Medal for her novel The Slave Dancer; a 1983 National Book Award in category Children's Fiction (paperback) for A Place Apart; and the 2008 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for A Portrait of Ivan (1969) in its German-language edition Ein Bild von Ivan.
Darin Strauss is an American writer whose work has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Strauss's 2011 book Half a Life, won the 2011 NBCC Award for memoir/autobiography. His most recent book, The Queen of Tuesday, came out in August 2020. It was nominated for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.
Katherine V. Forrest is a Canadian-born American writer, best known for her novels about lesbian police detective Kate Delafield. Her books have won and been finalists for Lambda Literary Award twelve times, as well as other awards. She has been referred to by some "a founding mother of lesbian fiction writing."
Petulia is a 1968 drama film directed by Richard Lester and starring Julie Christie, George C. Scott and Richard Chamberlain. The screenplay was by Lawrence B. Marcus from a story by Barbara Turner and is based on the 1966 novel Me and the Arch Kook Petulia by John Haase. It was scored by John Barry.
Prince Gomolvilas is a Thai American playwright. He has written many plays which have been produced in the United States and won several distinctive awards, including a PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Drama.
Home is a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Marilynne Robinson. Published in 2008, it is Robinson's third novel, preceded by Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead (2004).
Jonathan Evison is an American writer known for his novels All About Lulu, West of Here, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!, Lawn Boy, Legends of the North Cascades, and most recently Small World. His work, often distinguished by its emotional resonance and offbeat humor, has been compared by critics to a variety of authors, most notably J.D. Salinger, Charles Dickens, T.C. Boyle, and John Irving. Sherman Alexie has called Evison "the most honest white man alive."
Yann Martel, is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other best-selling lists. Life of Pi was adapted for a movie directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars including Best Director and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.
John Charles Gilkey is a prolific serial book and document thief who has stolen approximately US$200,000 worth of rare books and manuscripts. Gilkey used Modern Library's List of 100 Best Novels as a guide to what items he would steal. Unlike most book thieves who steal for a profit, his motives for the thefts were personal: he saw an expansive library as a sign of being upper-class.
David Francis is an Australian novelist, lawyer and academic.
David Kipen is an author, critic, broadcaster, arts administrator, full-time UCLA writing faculty member and nonprofit bilingual lending librarian. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Alta Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, OZY.com and elsewhere. Former literature director of the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in his native Southern California.
Caro De Robertis is a Uruguayan American author and professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. They are the author of five novels and the editor of an award-winning anthology, Radical Hope (2017), which include essays by such writers as Junot Diaz and Jane Smiley. They are also well known for their translational work, frequently translating Spanish pieces.
Rachel Khong is an American writer and editor based in San Francisco.
 | This article about a Bildungsroman of the 2000s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |