The Wasp Eater Book

"The Wasp Eater has an uncanny precision about love and forgiveness . . . It is one of the best narratives I have ever read about those who are unforgiven, and the effect of this refusal on a child." -- Charles Baxter

Deeply felt and wholly original, William Lychack's heart-rending debut charts a ten-year-old boy's quest to reunite his estranged parents. After learning of her husband's infidelity, Daniel's mother throws the man and his things out of the house. Stubborn and impulsive, Daniel's father is forbidden to visit, but he returns frequently to his son's window at night, furtively offering money, apologies, advice, and hope. Caught between his mother's pain and his father's guilt, Daniel attempts an extraordinary act in a desperate bid to repair his family.

Graceful and magnetic, this impressive first novel insightfully charts the raw emotional undercurrents of a broken family through characters whose human foibles are artfully drawn.

"This spare, meticulous novel opens out like a poem, its deceptively casual images bearing a universe of weight." -- New York Times Book Review

"Poignant . . . Lychack finds new ways to describe feelings too achingly familiar to anyone whose parents ever delivered similar news." -- San Diego Union-Tribune

"The simplicity and clarity of Lychack's writing are effective in their precise portrayal of a child's mind . . . vivid." -- People

William Lychack's stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, Triquarterly, and on public radio's This American Life. The Wasp Eater is his first book.

Publishers Weekly

In this slight first novel, 10-year-old Daniel tries to reunite his parents after his father, Bob (a man with a "sweepstakes smile and sly charm"), is kicked out of the house for having an affair with a waitress. On one of Bob's fleeting visits home, Daniel is given a pawnshop receipt for his mother's engagement ring. Thinking the ring might be the key to reconciliation, Daniel takes a bus from New England to New York to buy it back, but he runs into trouble and his father has to come and get him. Rather than return home, father and son set off on a road trip, an expedition limned with menace instead of tenderness because Bob is not a very nice guy. Even he admits as much, telling his son that, for the rest of his life, "You'll borrow fathers. And that'll be better for you much better." The honesty of Lychack's portrayal of a father's failure to make good is undermined by awkward shifts in perspective and by strained lyricism, which make this heartfelt story limp awkwardly along. Agent, Marly Rusoff. (Aug.) Forecast: Previous exposure Lychack was featured in The Best American Short Stories and on NPR's This American Life should give this a push out the gate, but word of mouth may be mixed. Author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.