A Better Class Of People by Robert Lopez (Book Review)
Thank you to Dzanc Books for offering me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Lopezâs book will be coming out on April 5 of 2022.
$16.95
Publication Date: April 5, 2022
Paperback: 150 pages
ISBN: 9781950539420
In an uncanny, distorted version of New York City, a man rides the subway through the chaos of an ordinary commute. He may have a gun in his pocket. He may be looking for someoneâa woman named Esperanza.
Between stops, we shuttle back and forth through time and see a man who stands in traffic, the same man seizing and shuddering on a sidewalk, an institution where the man is housed with other undesirables, a neighborhood where all the residents have forgotten their names. Over everything looms the specter of a nameless menace, a pervasive sense that somethingâmore than just a rideâis coming to an end.
With Robert Lopezâs signature innovation, A Better Class of People delivers a network of stories interconnected and careening like subway tunnels through the realities of modern America: immigration, gun violence, police brutality, sexual harassment, climate change, and the point of fracture at which we find ourselves, where reality and perception are indistinguishable.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR A BETTER CLASS OF PEOPLE:
"Lopez takes a look inside, messy guts, beating heart and all. A rawly observed universe peopled with voices of stirring honesty and wild loop-de-loops. Funny, brutal, brilliant.â
âSamantha Hunt
"Robert Lopez is one of the most exciting writers working today and these linked stories are an excellent introduction to his blazingly original intelligence and wit."
âJenny Offill
"Robert Lopez's A Better Class of People bowled me over. These stories are taut, intense, mysterious, and they echo off each other in totally unexpected ways -- and to boot -- the collection is an honest, funny, and brutal homage to New York City."
âPeter Orner
Anddd now, itâs time for my awaited praise! Hint hint: thereâs a lot to unpack here đ
Like many other reviewers, I think we can all agree that our reliable narrator has some sort of mental illness / illnesses that leave him disconnected from his own life. Little parts of a puzzle shouldâve revealed a bigger picture, instead left us, along with our narrator, confused â who is he? who did the narrator used to be? what happened to him? whatâs happening right now?
I love how Lopez split the different timelines and almost mixed them together in this short story collection. Usually, it would be frustrating for me to read, but Lopez made the transitions as smooth and easy to follow â things didnât matter. If I could compliment continuous points, I would! I just, simply, donât have an advanced-enough vocabulary to describe a masterpiece.
4 and a half. I definitely need to read more short stories to rate this a 5.
About the Author: Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, Part of the World, Kamby Bolongo Mean River ânamed one of 25 important books of the decade by HTML Giant, All Back Full, and two story collections, Asunder and Good People. A new book, A Better Class Of People, will be published by Dzanc Books in 2022. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in dozens of publications, including Bomb, The Threepenny Review, Vice Magazine, New England Review, The Sun, and the Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction â Latino. He teaches at Pratt Institute and Stony Brook University. He was a fellow in fiction for the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2010 and Visiting Writer at Syracuse University for fall, 2018. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
