Topical Guide 404
Mark Dorset
Available now, free, in the Apple Books store:
“A high-spirited romp through four generations of recent American history . . . the most pleasant surprise of the current literary season. It’s hard to recall a more auspicious mainstream debut in recent American fiction. A remarkable romance . . . without contemporary parallel . . . an unconditional success on its own terms.”
R. D. Pohl, The Buffalo News
“A historical farce, a comedy of four generations of happy errors. This very funny novel—as graceful, complicated, and exhilarating as a quadrille—is an appreciation of folly . . . a work of lovely formal artifice. Mr. Kraft has the gift of generosity of vision, and he detects passion, satisfaction and joy in the most mundane activities. . . . Satirical novelists like to poke holes in things; Mr. Kraft sees the holes that are already there and thinks they form intricate designs. He writes about the formal beauty of having fun. The novel is all about sex, and sex, in ‘Herb ’n’ Lorna,’ means everything in life that is good—craft and art and imagination and hard work and humor and friendship and skill and curiosity and loyalty and love. Eric Kraft is an exacting comic novelist whose work is happy and expansive.”
Cathleen Schine, The New York Times Book Review (front page review)
“This isn’t really a biography but a novel in biographical form. But whatever you call it, you have to love it. The charm of Kraft’s delightful novel is that despite the strangeness of coarse goods or cork furniture, the reader comes to really like and care about these people. Erotic art or not, you begin to wish that Peter’s grandparents were your own.”
Roberta J. Wahlers, The Milwaukee Journal
“A warm, inventive novel whose quirky humor and typically American optimism should delight many readers.”
ALA Booklist
“A warm, gently humorous, leisurely story, quite proper throughout; a charmer.”
Library Journal
“A beautiful book that shines with affection and crackles with good writing.”
Marc Munroe Dion, The Kansas City Star
“A whimsical investigation into the past. An exhilarating comic novel that is both marvelously sly and enormously good-natured. A wonderful love story . . . but there is much more to it than that. Loony and beguiling.”
Lisa Jensen, San Francisco Chronicle
“The unlikely premise of this book is a real grabber, and once Kraft gets hold of his audience, he doesn’t let go. Bawdy, raunchy, and warm. Great fun.”
Susan Sprague, The Trenton Times
“One all-American joyride of a novel, celebrating the carnal and the corny with equal exuberance. It held me in its thrall from the moment the first box was opened. Eric Kraft is nothing short of brilliant.”
Armistead Maupin
“A funny, sexy story told with consummate skill. However high its sexual content, it is always about love, and the twists and turns, logical and illogical, that love takes between two lives bound together down the years. Reality gets stood on its head. Everything works out. Love is a charm. Herb ’n’ Lorna is funny, readable, carefully plotted and cleverly told. You don’t get this lucky that often.”
Malcolm Jones, Jr., The St. Petersburg Times
“Rejoice! . . . Joyful sex suffuses Herb ’n’ Lorna, making it an oddity in these just-say-no days . . . sex indeed, but love and friendship, too, every sort of pleasure offered and taken. Kraft says yes to it all. Peter Leroy couldn’t have staged a more delightful comeback.”
Walter Kendrick, The Village Voice
“The kind of sweetness and passion and laughter Kraft draws from these ordinary lives is rare and endearing. Herb ’n’ Lorna is the happiest of books—not to mention the sexiest.”
Charles Trueheart,The Washington Post
“There aren’t enough adjectives to praise this delightfully generous storyteller. Herb ’n’ Lorna is a classic. Savor it.”
Andrei Codrescu, National Public Radio
Recommended by the Reader’s Catalogue
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1988)
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