Lake City

It's a few months after 9/11, and Lane Bueche, who has long fancied himself the Bill Clinton of Lake City Way, headed from the nowhere of north Seattle toward an upscale, intellectual life of NGOs and Economist editorials, is right back where he started, slicing turkey at the Fred Meyer deli and drinking Rainier tallboys at his mom's, just off the endless strip of car dealerships and bikini-barista huts. Kohnstamm's debut novel is a love letter of sorts to his old (and current) neighborhood in all its unambitious ugliness, and Lane is the colossal screw-up at its center. It's a messy farce with a sloppy heart, a kind of underbelly, Lesser Seattle companion to Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and pretty much required reading for anyone who cares about where Seattle has been, and is headed.