Sam Lipsyte is one of those authors you discover late and immediately commence locating his entire catalogue. On the basis of his fourth novel, The Ask, he is a virtuoso stylist, capable of funny and sad and serious, often on the same page. His language is worth savouring for itself.
Milo Burke, the hero of The Ask, has just been sacked from a New York university for insulting a potential charitable donor. That’s Milo’s job, to prospect for ‘asks’ from the rich with ‘gives’. An abandoned artistic career, looming mortgage default, a professional wife who is distant, a pre-school son . . . Milo’s life is spiralling into disaster. And then an old school pal surfaces from the past to request Milo as the intermediary for a huge university ‘give’. Salvation beckons; or, as Milo soon suspects, maybe not. Lipsyte has full command: his New York comes alive under his penmanship, he savages his characters yet somehow loves them, and the rollicking plot careens towards minor-key catastrophe. I laughed even as I longed for Milo’s salvation. And Lipsyte’s coruscating, gymnastic style rewards on each and every page.
Brilliant, revelatory up-to-the-minute fiction. 4 stars.