Manhattan Loverboy

Fiction. The human contours of the new city, with its surreally shifting social boundaries and incredibly shrinking public zones, remains largely out of reach, with the fortunate exceptions of 'science fiction' writers like J.G. Ballard and John Shirley, and, in a very different way, urban surrealist/satirist Arthur Nersesian ... MLB is paranoid fantasy and fantastic comedy in the service of social realism, using the methods of L. Frank Baum's WIZARD OF OZ or Kafka's THE TRIAL to update the picaresque urban chronicles of Augie March, with a far darker edge ... At its best, MLB assays the grittiest, funkiest urban-magic-realism yet, creating a satirical fiction avidly in search of the truth it's all too aware is even stranger than itself -- Phil Leggiere.