by Kelly Pickerill

At the end of June last year, Adam Ross came to Lemuria for an early stop on his first book’s tour. Mr. Peanut was released by Knopf on June 22, 2010, to great acclaim: master of crime Scott Turow penned a front page New York Times Book Review article, Stephen King blurbed the novel, calling it “The most riveting look at the dark side of marriage since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” and Lemuria, with overwhelming support from the staff, chose it to be our
July First Editions Club pick
(it’s the 6th review down, written by Zita).

A year later, Adam Ross is back with a book of short stories. In an interview with Dan Coxon on CultureMob, Ross talks about how the stories in Ladies and Gentlemen came to be:

The stories that comprise Ladies and Gentlemen were written during breaks that were thrust upon me while drafting Mr. Peanut, because there were stretches where I was simply stuck, quiet and quite anxious times when I was figuring out how to link up its disparate narratives. Meanwhile I had all these other ideas that presented themselves on what seemed like a much more manageable scale and I desperately wanted to get a taste of The End of something, so I’d honor inspiration at these times; and when my agent was ready to shop Mr. Peanut I also had thirteen or more stories under my belt which we boiled down to seven and which, we discovered, orbited similar themes as the novel.

The first story, the longest at 62 pages, is about an out of work middle aged man who, coming to realize that his desperation connects to his lifelong lack of ambition, attempts to take a neighbor’s son under his wing when he sees him choosing the same path. But just like in Mr. Peanut, that’s only the surface of the story. The connection between Ross’s stories and his novel is evident in his, well, storytelling. After all, doesn’t “telling a story” essentially mean “lying,” in order to beguile (Ross’s stories do this), instruct (yes, this too), or entertain (yes, without a doubt)?

In both books, the reader is being told a story, first and foremost, and if he ever forgets it, the outcome of Ross’s stories may shock him. As the narrator in “The Suicide Room” says, “I’m free to embellish, to treat memory as fact or shape it to suit whatever I’m working on. My primary responsibility, I suppose, is to set you dreaming. If that requires me to alter things, then I will.” But there is much truth among the lies (excuse me, stories) of Ladies and Gentlemen, and for that Lemuria will always be glad to listen to the stories of Adam Ross.

Adam Ross will be signing and reading at Lemuria Thursday, July 14th, beginning at 5 o’clock. Ladies and Gentlemen, New York: Knopf (2011), is available for pre-order here.

FEC members: If you received a signed first edition of Mr. Peanut last year and would like to add a copy of Ladies and Gentlemen to your First Editions Club shipment this month, email zita@lemuriabooks.com

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