These Lowly Objects

In These Lowly Objects, Cate McGowan has fashioned one of

the great fictional characters of our time in Jules Lalande,

Dadaist extraordinaire. From his Dickensian childhood

alongside a second cousin (and later, wife), Isobel, McGowan

tracks--in rich, rigorous prose--the Zelig-like Lalande's

wanderings through fin de si cle Paris as he rubs elbows with

Degas and C zanne, fights in World War I, lands in New York

with Breton, becomes a professional boxer, hangs out with

Duchamp, and disappears in Cuba--or does he? Enter this

remarkably imagined, enchanted world and discover the

many delights of McGowan's marvelous creation.

--Robin Lippincott, author of Blue Territory:

A Meditation on the Life and Art of Joan Mitchell

Lyrical, stunning, and deeply strange, Cate McGowan's novel

concerns a shape-shifting protagonist, Jules Lalande. Lalande

disappeared years ago: various people--his estranged wife

Isobel Wright, journalist Titus Pidgeon, and the people

Pidgeon interviews, including historical figures like Andre

Breton and Marcel Duchamp--chase his scent. McGowan's

luminous novel tracks their efforts to conjure this enigmatic

poet-painter-performance artist-thief-con man-duke-trauma

victim-killer-healer. Twisty and original, These Lowly Objects

is fundamentally about self-hood, its precariousness and

perishability, and its surprising capacity for resurrection.

--Kim Magowan, author of Undoing and The

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