Let Me Explain You

by Annie Liontas Narrated by Robertson Dean

Overview

A “big rollicking, tender novel with a truly original comic voice at its center” (George Saunders), Let Me Explain You is about a Greek American family and its patriarch - - part Zorba, part King Lear- - and announces the arrival of a significant new voice in contemporary literature.

Let Me Explain You begins with a letter: Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, Greek immigrant and proud owner of the Gala Diner in New Jersey, believes he has just ten days left to live. He sends a scathing email to the estranged ex-wife and three grown daughters, outlining his wishes for how they each might better their lives. He then prepares for his final hours and wonders why he is alone. With varying degrees of laughter and scorn, his family and friends have dismissed his behavior as nothing more than a predictable plea for attention, but when Stavros really does disappear, those closest to him are forced to confront the possibility of his death and the realities of their loss.

A vibrant tour de force told from multiple perspectives and driving to a surprising conclusion, Let Me Explain You eulogizes Stavros Stavros, turning in part of his realization that “a man spends his whole life trying to say it better,” while giving necessary voice to the women in his life. This multigenerational novel explores our origins and family myths, reinvention and forgiveness, hunger and what feeds us. Let Me Explain You is a beautifully told, heartfelt story, and its meditations on the communal power of story telling and family-- most notably the relationship between fathers and daughters, but also the complex bond of sisterhood - are at turns and deeply moving.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Molly Young

…Stavros is a character who would be incredibly annoying in real life. He is an irascible, grandstanding, rhetorical-question-asking, self-pitying fellow, "more shovel than man," as Liontas puts it, in one of many excellent turns of phrase. A bull in the china shop of his family…The literary redemption of Stavros, of course, is that he is funny. In her death-bound patriarch, Liontas has invented a character that falls a nostril-hair's-width short of caricature—risky comic territory, where she mostly succeeds…Liontas's voice is rambunctious…The experience of Let Me Explain You is less of reading a book than of renting a room in someone's brain—a room boisterous with moving bodies, food smells, noises. It's a festive place to visit.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune - Jessie Van Berkel

"The characters are crafted with loving familiarity... their stories are filled with comedy (the joke is often at Mavrakis' expense) and peppered with nostalgic descriptions of food. Let Me Explain You will leave you laughing."

Out Magazine - James McDonald

"The strange saga of a Greek immigrant family deals with sexuality, superstition, and lots of yummy food... thoroughly engaging."

San Francisco Chronicle (Best Books of 2015) - Natalie Bakopoulos

"Liontas awards all her characters a deeply inhabited interiority... pitch perfect... explores what it means to be foreign — to a place, to those around us and to ourselves — and what we take in, what we long for and how we interpret it... Liontas beautifully explores the ways we devour one life to create another... This is what I want from fiction, a story that is, and makes me feel, very much alive."

Shelf Awareness - Josh Potter

"Humorous and heartfelt... treats its characters with so much empathy and tenderness that it's hard not to think of the Mavrakis family as any other than the reader's own."

Bustle

"Evocative... while Steve’s elephantine personality could virtually constitute its own Greek chorus, Liontas writes the women who surround him with equal amounts of verve, and more than enough heart, to soften his rough edges."

Huffington Post - Claire Fallon

"Liontas’ energetic saga infuses a poignant family drama with raucous humor and outsize characters... Let Me Explain You has both heart and hilarity, the perfect combination."

BookPage - Carrie Rollwagen

"Let Me Explain You is about the American dream: the good, the bad, the ugly and the hilariously relatable... Liontas tells her story masterfully. We’re invited into the family’s inside jokes, and we laugh, hurt and cry with the characters as they peel away the family drama and generational divides and, somewhat unexpectedly, find love at the center of their story."

Booklist - Deborah Donovan

"A lively portrait ... this simultaneously sad and funny story of a first-generation immigrant and his rocky family relationships will resonate with a broad range of readers."

Muses & Visionaries Magazine

"A funny and moving rumination on the beauty and complexity of familial bonds... a page-turner that concludes in an unexpected way."

Rivka Galchen

Stavros Stavros Steve Mavrakis is among the most brilliantly foolish, compellingly maddening, and memorable characters I have come across in any modern novel. Or Greek diner. Let Me Explain You displays the author’s intense sensitivity to both language and humor, used to tremendous emotional effect.Annie Liontas is a star.

Mary Karr

Annie Liontas has fashioned from the raw facts of immigrant experience and family life a hilarious, fascinating, poetic work of fiction. You'll find yourself rereading it aloud for the guffaws it yanks from you. A dazzling debut destined to become a classic.”

George Saunders

A big, rollicking, tender novel and family saga with a truly original comic voice at its center.

Dana Spiotta

A wickedly funny and compassionate novel about a very contemporary Greek-American family. Annie Liontas gives us their story with precise and wonderful particularity; she shows us how the arguments, the omens, the foods, and the memories intimately bind them to one another. A sparkling debut from an exciting new writer.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune (10 Novels Not to Miss) - Carol Memmott

"Darkly comic... Liontas shows compassion for her characters even as she plumbs their dysfunction. Seeded with family anecdotes, the novel’s true heart is one filled with love and forgiveness."

The New York Times - Helen T. Verongos

"We don’t hear much from the Greek-American school of literature, which makes LET ME EXPLAIN YOU, a hilarious yet rich novel about Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, an immigrant from Crete, his perception of his own mortality, and the women in his life, even more of a treat than grandma’s galaktoboureko,the custard pastry for which his flagship diner, the Gala, is named. This debut by Annie Liontas will touch you even if your own roots are not steeped in Greek coffee."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171735180
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	07/14/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Let Me Explain You

From: [e-mail]

To: [e-mail]; [e-mail];

[e-mail]; [e-mail]

Subject: Our Father, Who is Dying in Ten Days

Dear, Family. Daughters & Ex-Wife:

Let me explain you something: I am sick in a way that no doctor would have much understanding. I am sick in a way of the soul that, yes, God will take me. No, I am not a suicide. I am Deeper than that, I am talking More than that.

DEAR STAVROULA, MY OLDEST. Please grow out your hair. It is very very short. This is one little thing that can change everything, you will see what I am saying when you take this small but substantial advice. Sometimes if we are who we are supposed to be on the outside, we are who we are supposed to be on the inside. The hair is the thing to trust and leave alone, and it will take care of you.

Let me explain you something: your father has seen some of the world for it to be enough. There is a way to be for the normal society, and you are not it. The hair says things about you that, yes, they are true, but the hair is not a fortune-teller. The hair is not the thing that has to point the way, like a streetlight.

I am not somebody religious, but this I know: Death is coming. In ten days, I promise you, your father the man will cease, he will be dust, he will be food in the worms. What do we owe our father? This is the question you can say to yourself at this time. Who can deny a dead man—a dead father—the thing that he demands?

No, I am not sick like my brother in Crete, who die with emphysema (this is Greek en which means in and physan means breath).

DEAR LITZA, MY SECOND, please go to church. You could say, no dad, you go to church then we will talk about if I go to church, but what I am talking about here are lessons that I should have taken for myself if my father had the wisdom to give me awareness, which I am holding out for you.

Litza, let me explain you something. Litza, you have problems.

Litza, nobody marries for a big wedding and then divorce one week later. When your mother and I divorce, it took years off our life. Litza, nobody destroys property the way when you come here into my diner and smash the dessert case with my own stool. The same is true for your sister, which you take that same stool and break her car window with it, even though you deny this always. Are you on drugs, Litza? Are you the same low-life as your biological mother, Dina?

Litza, you need God in your life.

Litza I see how much helping you are needing, and I know that God has to exist, because he is the only one who can do for you. I cannot do for you. I can only do for you what I am done for you.

And here, I will tell you this secret, that I have questions for God—Are you real? Are you here for me, Stavros Stavros Steve Mavrakis? Am I Your Forgotten Son? What is the meaning of this life that is too sorry for what it could be? Even though I have succeeded more, much more, than any foreigner would do in my country and I have now two diners and plans for selling one of them so that I have a little something for the future, yours not mine since my future is not something I can belong to any longer, and not your Mother since she is a thief, I’m sorry if it is a truth.

I, Stavros Stavros, have ask God to erase the mistakes of my life; and God has answer, in a matter of speaking, That it is best to Start Over, which requires foremost that We End All that is Stavros Stavros. No, not with suicide. With Mercy.

Yes, Litza, you must go to Church. To pray. For your father, yes, and for yourself.

DEAR RUBY, MY LITTLE ONE that I have adoration. It is a good rule to follow that if the mustache is weak, so will be the man. Look at your father’s mustache, which it is a fist! Forget the boys, Ruby, find yourself a man who encourages you get your own education, because you don’t want to be one of those woman who takes and takes and does not appreciate all of the way her husband slaves, like your Mother. Don’t go marrying some losers. Which you know I am talking about Dave. Why choose a man with the facial hair of an onion? When you can choose instead one of my assistant cooks, who make a decent living and has dreams of owning their own diner the way their mentor has, which is your father.

Otherwise, you are doing OK.

DEAREST MY EX-WIFE, Carol, the Mother, who divorce me one year ago. Which I am still, as a generous person, paying for things like to repair the plumbing. I am talking to the woman who is still my Wife in death, even if she did not know how to mourn me in life: please be the Ex-wife a Wife should be, in sickness and health. Even though you poison Stavroula and Litza against me from the moment I bring them into this fat country, and Ruby from the moment you bring her into the world. That is why I am asking: you should wear only black for the next year. To show a sign of honor for the man who walk much of this life with you by his side.

If you have any confusions, Daughters and Wife, you can email a response. I will answer them all. Such as, what is missing for a man at the end of his life when the path is clear and wisdom is the greatest? . . . the respect and love for the pateras!

Signed within Ten Days of Life Left, and a Dying Promise, Your Father: Stavros Stavros Steve Mavrakis

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