I'll Let You Go

"[Wagner] slices open the self-satisfied bosom of Los Angeles yet again in his third novel, a sprawling family saga that trades the usual mush-mouthed sentimentalities for cascading shards of knife-edged vignettes. A masterful, modern-day fantasy of millionaires and madmen, fathers and sons, reality and dreams."

--Kirkus Reviews

Bruce Wagner’s** I’m Losing You **was hailed as "outrageous -- dead-on in every way" by Janet Maslin in *The New York Times.* *New York* magazine’s Walter Kirn called it "the year’s best book." And John Updike, in *The New Yorker*, wrote that Bruce Wagner "writes like a wizard." In **I’ll Let You Go**, Wagner offers a stunning novel that surpasses anything he’s done before.

Twelve-year-old Toulouse "Tull" Trotter lives on his grandfather’s vast Bel-Air parkland estate with his mother, the beautiful, drug-addicted Katrina, a landscape artist who specializes in topiary laby-rinths. He spends most of his time with his young cousins Lucy, the girl detective, and Edward, a prodigy undaunted by the disfiguring effects of Apert Syndrome. One day, an impulsive revelation from Lucy sets in motion a chain of events that changes Tull -- and the Trotter family -- forever.

Though the story unfolds in contemporary Los Angeles, the reader hears echoes of Proust and 1,001 Nights as Toulouse seeks his lost father, a woman finds her lost love, and a family of unimaginable wealth learns that its fate is tied to those of the orphan Amaryllis (who officially aspires to be a saint) and her protector, a courtly giant of a homeless schizophrenic -- both of them on the run from the law. Along a path shaded by murder and mysticism, we meet such unforgettable characters as Fitzsimmons, a deranged former social worker; the enterprising Monasterio family of servants (Candelaria, Epitacio, and Eulogio); "Someone-Help-Me", a streetwise devil; and Pullman, a seemingly ageless Great Dane.

Complexly wrought, deeply moving, and scathingly ironic,** I'll Let You Go **dazzles the reader with the unique blend of gorgeous prose, acerbic wit, and deep emotion that are the specific province of Bruce Wagner.

*From the Hardcover edition.*