Most people in so-called civilized society believe a thick boundary exists between "normal us" and "them"--the homeless and mentally ill. Somewhere in the middle of this 10th book by the author of All That Road Going and A Stopping Place, the us/them boundary starts to seem pretty porous. Though art has long challenged the notion of "crazy" in the human condition, Mojtabai's elegiac story is a fresh, if sad, rumination on the questionable comforts of sanity.
New York City social worker Tom Limbeck has hit a midcareer, midlife crisis: his love relationship has disintegrated, he's sliding into depression and he has developed an unhealthy obsession with the well-being of one client over all others. That client, Michael, clings to delusions that cause him to live a street life of constant peril. Unable to effect positive change in his own life, Tom goes to great--and unethical--lengths to disabuse Michael of his false beliefs. But Tom's widening despair and Michael's seemingly charmed survival suggest that perhaps lucidity isn't the only path to a life.
Mojtabai's prose is stately and spare, evocative of the gray details of Tom's New York existence and the ugly realities of street life, yet devoid of distracting digressions. Before she is done, Mojtabai explores faith and the faultiness of childhood memories and suggests an uncomfortable distance in human connections. This is serious work by a seasoned writer; emotionally challenging, certainly, with its haunting themes, but intellectually stimulating and undeniably powerful. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic