NOW YOU SEE HIM
Eli Gottlieb
William Morrow
Fiction
ISBN: 9780061284649

• About the Book
• Read an Excerpt
• Author Interview –– January 25, 2008

“When I ask myself why the life and death of my old friend and his lover blew up into a rolling national media storm…the only conclusion I can come to is that it must have been the universal appeal of the whole thing that turned people’s heads. It had good looks, talent, the New York skyline and a bad end.”

Indeed, it has all that --- and more. Rob Castor, Nick Framingham’s closest childhood friend, has done a shocking thing. It appears as if he killed his ex-lover and then himself. It looks that way, but did he?

Time nearly stops for Nick, as he reflects on what brought his old pal to such a state. Were there signs that he --- and everyone else, for that matter --- missed? Sure, Rob was suffering from writer’s block, but that shouldn’t drive a person to suicide. Sure, his latest girlfriend, Kate Pierce, had left him for a much older, much less attractive man, but was murder really the answer? Rob had had plenty of women in his life, women much more stunning than Kate, and had never gone wanting for a companion to share his bed. Did his writer’s block extend into the bedroom?

In the process of trying to understand how Rob ended up as he did, Nick decides to take a closer look at his own life and the direction it should take. He knows that he has been going through the motions with Lucy, his beautiful wife. Rob’s death makes Nick sit up and pay attention. As he comes out of his fog, it occurs to him that it might be possible to salvage his sagging marriage. But Lucy has turned cold and unyielding, and has begun holding Nick’s sons as emotional ransom. How long has she been trying to reach him, and how far back was it that Nick lost touch? Maybe it’s too late for them after all.

As Nick works to figure out what he really wants, Rob’s sister Belinda drops back into his life. A bawdy and flamboyant woman addicted to substances and drama --- and totally devastated by her brother’s death --- Belinda arrives with a need to recover the happiness of their childhood. They were a threesome back in the good old days, like a tiny sexless army attacking the streets of the town. Now Belinda uses Nick as a conduit to Rob’s memory and a placebo for the pain. Her mother can’t help; she is coping with the loss of her son in her own way. She is escaping deeper into the bottle she long ago grew fond of and spitting vituperative insults at everyone in the hope that her pain will go away by hurling it onto others, notably Nick. Belinda is a welcome diversion.

But then along comes a spoiler, Mac, an old buddy of both Nick and Rob and a thorn in Nick’s side. As a writer of some little fame, Mac found common ground with Rob and sparked a persistent jealousy in Nick. Now Mac has elbowed his way into a contract to write the definitive book on Rob Castor, an honor that brings out the worst in him, traits that didn’t lurk far below the surface. False congeniality, blatant flattery, vast quantities of booze --- he offers all of it with little compunction.

By now, Nick and the rest of the world appear to be on a collision course. He can’t please his wife, doesn’t care to help Mac and has been alternately drawing Belinda toward him and shoving her away. When he runs out of ways to alienate those nearest him, Nick turns on his parents, with whom he always had a somewhat rocky relationship but never quite knew why. He is about to find out.

With characters so uniquely drawn and a story so perfectly paced, NOW YOU SEE HIM is more than engrossing --- it is totally consuming. Eli Gottlieb, whose 1997 debut novel THE BOY WHO WENT AWAY won the prestigious Rome Prize and was a New York Times Notable book, exhibits an amazing talent for mixing intelligent humor with a thriller of rare substance. Everything about his sophomore effort is brilliant; there is simply nothing wrong with this book. We can only hope that another decade doesn’t go by before we become absorbed in Gottlieb’s third work of fiction.

    --- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

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