Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
‘Lonesome Lies’ produces incredible depth of emotion
Don Lee’s lovely, affecting new novel, “Lonesome Lies Before Us,” is about Yadin, a singer-songwriter in his mid-40s whose continued use of “altcountry” to describe his neglected music tells you how far from relevance he has sunk.
A native Midwesterner transplanted to the economically tested town of Rosarita Bay on the northern California coast, Yadin is living in a house he inherited from his grandmother.
Yadin works for his girlfriend’s father laying carpet. His girlfriend, Jeanette, thinks he has shelved his artistic aspirations, which she regards as distractions from the demands of real life. But having secretly written a bunch of new tunes, he hopes to record one final album — “not to try to revive his career, but as a coda, a valediction.”
The clock is ticking — he is losing his hearing to Meniere’s disease, the ravages of which have put a major dent in his career. And who knows how long it will take the bank to approve a loan for his homemade project?
Most novelists would let Yadin’s sad, soulful tale carry the day and employ Jeanette as a literary backup singer. But for Lee, her life is no less meaningful — or, in a spiritual sense, magnificent — in all its heartbreaks and derailed hopes. Once an aspiring photographer, she is now a housekeeper at a local resort. She is so good at her job, she is promoted to floor manager — a step up that only highlights how down her life has been.
She and Yadin are perfectly companionable — they sing together in the choir of the Unitarian Universalist Church — but they rarely make love. “I’m not a sexual person,” she told him at the outset, establishing conditions to which he is agreeable. Enter Mallory Wicks, Yadin’s long-ago girlfriend and bandmate back in North Carolina.
She is a big country star and bigger celebrity.
When he discovers she is staying at Jeanette’s resort, indulging her passion for golf, he can’t resist going to see her. Twentythree years after breaking up with her, he still pines for her, keeping up on her every career move. To his surprise, she is equally familiar with his various recording projects.
Self-pampered, cosmetically altered, but still tough-edged, Mallory insists on helping him out with his recording and lobbies him to go after a major record deal — something he steadfastly opposes, having had his fill of corporate types. The tension between them brings back their conflicted past.
The title of the novel, taken from one of Yadin’s new songs, has a double meaning. Yadin says it refers to the state of lonesomeness that lies ahead. But in more significant ways, it addresses the “lonesome lies” — the sad, unexceptional mistruths — that can shape people’s lives. Yadin and Jeanette don’t know why they lie to each other or withhold information about tragic events in their lives — for Yadin being abandoned by his father, for Jeanette losing her first lover to a car accident and subsequently discovering unwelcome truths about him.
Few novels capture the mindset and methodology of making music as vividly as “Lonesome Lies Before Us.” Lee worked closely with prolific indie artist Will Johnson in crafting Yadin’s brooding lyrics, which are inspired by the spiritual quests of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and the works of alt-country greats like Gram Parsons. The descriptions of Yadin’s sessions with Mallory, returning to her roots as a violinist, are transporting.
Like a great album — Parsons’ “Grievous Angel,” let’s say — “Lonesome Lies Before Us” is both a collection of brilliantly realized moments and a work that transcends the sum of its parts.
There are no minor observations in this novel, no scenes that don’t matter. In the end, the depth of feeling attained by the exceptionally sensitive Lee lingers, inspiring more spins through his songlike prose. A novel more full of life, musical and other, is hard to imagine.