TAKE ME WITH YOU

A marriage is tested when one of the husbands is abducted by aliens.

Poor Jesse. One of the first things he says to Norman after their meet-cute—colliding on the bike path in Venice, California—is, “Where you go I go.” But years later, after they’ve moved to Joshua Tree, passed middle age, and are contemplating their cooling marriage, Norman steps into an unexplained beam of light in their yard one night and disappears. Jesse enters a period of grief, but also something stranger, since he has no answers and doesn’t know how to talk to anyone about his unheard-of circumstances—though, interestingly, he doesn’t seem to debate with himself about whether he should even try. There are other, more straightforward kinds of grief in this novel, too. For Jesse, there’s the pain of never having had a father, as well as the sorrow he felt after an adoption attempt with Norman that fell through at the last minute. For Norman’s sister, Lally, there’s grief over a brother who died in an accident when she was 5, and over her own nonexistent motherhood. She wants access to the embryos she helped create for Norman and Jesse, but Jesse is prickly about this request. Well, it’s a Steven Rowley book, so most of the characters are prickly. Other things Rowley does well: quippy one-liners (though occasionally a joke comes out of a minor character’s mouth that sounds more like the author’s voice), tertiary characters who shine, funny party scenes with a mix of offbeat personalities and perfectly timed chaos. Also: detailed place description and a tender, unhurried contemplation of the human condition. Plot and structure aren’t so much his bag. Norman is a particularly tough character to grasp. He is less well formed than many of the other characters and neither his disappearance nor the problems in his marriage feel adequately solved.

A sweet and tart story stretched over a quirky frame.