A Separate Reality: A Novel

by Robert Marshall

Overview

Set in the early 1970s, A Separate Reality is the story of Mark Grosfeld, a twelve-year-old growing up in Phoenix with politically active liberal Jewish parents. Mark, who is lonely and unhappy, meets Anna Voigt, a teacher who becomes his mentor. Anna, an ex-hippie poet, encourages Mark to write, and he becomes part of a circle of teenagers who meet at Anna's house to smoke pot and read poetry. She introduces him to the Beats, Zen Buddhism and the popular pseudo-anthropologist, Carlos Castaneda, author of Journey to Ixtlan. Mark goes on a semi-comic suburban vision quest, trying to conduct his life according to the teachings he uncovers in the books he finds through Anna - most significantly, Castaneda's. Mark soon discovers all these books share the belief that through a loss of "self" one can, somehow, transcend reality. A Separate Reality is a novel about the risks and appeal of the desire to be perfect; a portrait of the artist as a young man in the Seventies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786717156
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	10/10/2006
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	0.99(w) x 5.50(h) x 8.50(d)

About the Author

Robert Marshall, a writer and visual artist, lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Blithe House Quarterly and in the anthologies Fresh Men 2, Afterwords, and Queer 13; and his artwork has been exhibited widely throughout the United States, Europe, and South America. He is the recipient of a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship.

What People are Saying About This

Wayne Koestenbaum

A beautifully understated and evocative rendering of what it feels like to grow up as a 'misfit.' I loved the prose's fidelity to thought's careening process. Robert Marshall's closeups of youthful sadness and elation, like Truffaut's or Bresson's or Solondz's, have a bitter, alienated clarity.
— author of The Queen's Throat

Christopher Bram

A gentle dream of a novel, precise and careful, about the end of childhood. Robert Marshall takes us deep into the life of a precocious twelve-year-old boy in Arizona in the 1970s. Reading this book was just like being twelve again, with all its confusing complications. A very original, serious, heartfelt piece of work.
— author of Gods and Monsters

Sarah Bynum

Robert Marshall casts a spell with his translucent prose and his startling powers of perception. With sensitivity, candor, and disarming humor, he offers a fresh look at the making of an artist. A Separate Reality evokes all the doubts and indignities of adolescence, as well as the deep ambivalence of belonging to an intellectual family. Balanced gracefully between the everyday and the mystical, this novel achieves a transcendence of its own.
— author of Madeleine is Sleeping

Lynne Tillman

Robert Marshall's unique voice, wry intelligence, sly humor, and genuine understanding of the family romance infuse his first novel. A Separate Reality beautifully depicts the poignant and bizarre condition called adolescence. It's a wonderful, imaginative work."
— author of No Lease on Life

Editorial Reviews

Marshall can be a remarkably vivid writer. Mark listens to "Fire and Rain" and observes, "It was comforting to know James Taylor, too, was lonely."
— The Washington Post

David Levithan

In this debut novel, Marshall introduces Mark Grosfeld, a budding 13-year-old poet who grapples with complex existential thoughts as well as the brutal alienation he feels from his peers in early 1970s Arizona. Mark's problems begin when he tells his family that he would rather be a girl, which leads to regular sessions with a therapist. The counseling helps only marginally, but Mark does connect with his ex-hippy English teacher, Anna, who encourages his writing and nascent drug use. The narrative consists mainly of Mark's tortured internal musings on adolescence, poetry, and the work of dubious counterculture icon Carlos Castaneda. The novel has more structure when Mark's father, an accomplished liberal lawyer, runs for Congress, and Mark decides to channel his frustrated energy into the cause, albeit mostly halfheartedly. When a writer focuses exclusively on one character, it helps if that character is extremely interesting or easy to empathize with. Mark falls into neither category, which is not to say that Marshall's novel completely misses the mark. Recommended for gay literature collections.-Kevin Greczek, Ewing, NJ Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal