All Back Full by Robert Lopez
All Back Full, the third novel from acclaimed author Robert Lopez, centers around one day in the lives of three characters: a husband and wife, and the man’s friend, who has been invited for dinner. Around the fixture of the kitchen table, the characters move in and out, discussing the news, nudists, submarines, the state of public transportation, seagulls, sexual perversion, and major league baseball. More important is what they will not discuss: lies, infidelity, that the man’s father has cancer and that this marriage is frayed at every seam. Ultimately, the friend’s presence upsets the fragile equilibrium and pushes the relationship to a breaking point, as the tensions between all three characters steadily unravel.
Told in a unique three-act structure, Robert Lopez delivers a novel of spare prose and surprising depth, delving into the origins of everything from whiskey to waltz. Lopez lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at The New School, Pratt Institute, Columbia University, and the Solstice MFA Program of Pine Manor College. His stories have appeared in Bomb, American Reader, Nerve, New England Review, and others.
Publication Date: February 2017
Paperback: 184 pages
ISBN: 978-1-941088-67-8
Also available as an eBook
All Back Full, the third novel from acclaimed author Robert Lopez, centers around one day in the lives of three characters: a husband and wife, and the man’s friend, who has been invited for dinner. Around the fixture of the kitchen table, the characters move in and out, discussing the news, nudists, submarines, the state of public transportation, seagulls, sexual perversion, and major league baseball. More important is what they will not discuss: lies, infidelity, that the man’s father has cancer and that this marriage is frayed at every seam. Ultimately, the friend’s presence upsets the fragile equilibrium and pushes the relationship to a breaking point, as the tensions between all three characters steadily unravel.
Told in a unique three-act structure, Robert Lopez delivers a novel of spare prose and surprising depth, delving into the origins of everything from whiskey to waltz. Lopez lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at The New School, Pratt Institute, Columbia University, and the Solstice MFA Program of Pine Manor College. His stories have appeared in Bomb, American Reader, Nerve, New England Review, and others.
Publication Date: February 2017
Paperback: 184 pages
ISBN: 978-1-941088-67-8
Also available as an eBook
All Back Full, the third novel from acclaimed author Robert Lopez, centers around one day in the lives of three characters: a husband and wife, and the man’s friend, who has been invited for dinner. Around the fixture of the kitchen table, the characters move in and out, discussing the news, nudists, submarines, the state of public transportation, seagulls, sexual perversion, and major league baseball. More important is what they will not discuss: lies, infidelity, that the man’s father has cancer and that this marriage is frayed at every seam. Ultimately, the friend’s presence upsets the fragile equilibrium and pushes the relationship to a breaking point, as the tensions between all three characters steadily unravel.
Told in a unique three-act structure, Robert Lopez delivers a novel of spare prose and surprising depth, delving into the origins of everything from whiskey to waltz. Lopez lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at The New School, Pratt Institute, Columbia University, and the Solstice MFA Program of Pine Manor College. His stories have appeared in Bomb, American Reader, Nerve, New England Review, and others.
Publication Date: February 2017
Paperback: 184 pages
ISBN: 978-1-941088-67-8
Also available as an eBook
PRAISE FOR ALL BACK FULL:
“For my money, there are few writers who can do voice better than Robert Lopez, and few who can evoke so much of a world in so few words. Frank, funny, angular, and conceptual without the baggage, All Back Full breaks further ground of the wake of Beckett and Markson in the way only Lopez can. I look forward to his every sentence.”
—Blake Butler, author of Three Hundred Million
“Funny, past-paced, and weird, All Back Full has an addictive rhythm that makes it half song, a playfulness that makes it delightful, and a thoughtfulness that makes it important.”
—Deb Olin Unferth, author of Wait Till You See Me Dance
PRAISE FOR ROBERT LOPEZ:
“Lopez’s layering of words is astounding. His diction may appear ordinary, but the space between what is said and what the reader hears is profound.”
—Bookslut
“Lopez’s prose is more like a great jazz performance: pointedly provisional, even damaged, and solicitous of audience participation…intoxicating as the best Coltrane.”
—Review of Contemporary Fiction
“Literary pleasures like [reading Lopez] are all too uncommon.”
—Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome and Kind One
“Lopez and his writing are original and pure, fearless and hypnotic. He is one of the brave protagonists of American literature.”
—Michael Kimball, author of Big Ray and Us
“Gets under your skin and latches on.”
—Brian Evenson, author of Immobility and Windeye
“[Lopez’s fiction] bears genetic traces of Beckett and Stein, but [his] powerful cadences and bleak, joyful wit are all his own.” —Sam Lipsyte, author of The Fun Parts and Home Land
“Lopez examines the almost inherent dysfunction present in modern relationships. [They’re] like rated-R version[s] of a Raymond Carver story.”
—Ampersand Review
“[Lopez’s world] is an affectless poetics planet caught in the black-hole gravity of a Stephen Dixon-esque free-falling narrative sink.”
—Michael Martone, author of Four for a Quarter and The Blue Guide to Indiana
“Lopez’s ability to create an authentic, consistent voice…is remarkable…. Reads completely new and true.”
—Quarterly Conversation
“A contemporary writer to look up to…[Lopez] is a word-storm, a force of literary nature come unhinged, blowing shutters against readers’ houses.”
—Rumpus
ABOUT ROBERT LOPEZ
Robert Lopez is the author of two novels, Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, and two story collections, Asunder and Good People. He teaches at The New School, Pratt Institute, Columbia University, and the Solstice MFA Program of Pine Manor College. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
