FRESH, GREEN LIFE

A lonely academic visits his mentor’s house on New Year’s Eve.

Sureness of tone goes a long way in Castillo’s novel, which begins like autofiction and arrives at an unexpected destination. When the novel opens, the narrator—who shares a name and some qualities with the author, albeit subtly altered—is alone at home on New Year’s Eve. He received an invitation from Aleister, an old professor and provocateur, inviting him to a gathering at his home in the Philadelphia suburbs. The possibility that Maria, an old classmate whose marriage recently ended, will be there is enough to get the narrator to venture out of the house, and eventually, he makes the circumstances clearer and the stakes become higher. He’s been in the midst of a self-imposed vow of silence after an ill-advised classroom lecture about leprechauns went terribly wrong. Castillo takes on the challenging task of balancing the tension between the narrator’s inner life, which includes thoughts like “I found their blitheness untoward,” and the more obscure and awkward actions in which he engages. When the narrator arrives at Aleister’s house, things do not go the way he expects; he learns that Aleister has been keeping secrets from him and is contemplating suicide. Castillo weaves in some jarring and even comic details, such as the fact that Aleister’s book collection includes Deleuze for Dummies. That combination of highbrow references and deadpan comedy clicks resonantly throughout the book, and admirers of Thomas Bernhard’s work will find plenty to savor here. The gulf between the narrator’s intellectual ideals and lived reality—including awkwardly “liking” a sexy photo of Maria on social media—gives this short novel plenty of energy.

Castillo navigates an emotionally fraught narrative with empathy and dry humor.