Pastiche

Intense and artfully self-centered, this novel wraps around itself in search of release, after which the pleasure is over all too soon. Jonathan Harnisch's Pastiche is an exhaustive and frequently painful catalog of the struggles of the weirdly shy and chronically frustrated character Benny, who struggles to find a way to connect to the outer world. Benny likes latex. He likes to be encased, totally enclosed, and separated from reality by a thin, impermeable layer of rubber. His anxiety is ...