Book Review: “No One Left to Come Looking for You” by Sam Lipsyte
Punk Rock Garbage that Is Pure Gold
The title of American novelist Sam Lipsyte’s new book is a little bit of a misnomer. It turns out, in the semi-existential style of The Big Lebowski, that there is, after all, someone who will come looking for you if you’re a missing person or are somehow lost. However, this is also no story about a ruined rug. This is the tale of a bunch of punk rockers in 1993 New York City looking to find their place in the world. At a more microcosmic level, you could say that this is the fable of a young man looking for a missing roommate — if not a prized possession, a bass guitar. No One Left to Come Looking for You is a bewitching tale that is equal parts fun and funny. Seriously, there were parts of this that had me chuckling out loud. Lipsyte has a clear ability to make the reader sigh in delight at some of the zingers and one-liners that pepper the novel. It is the kind of thing that doesn’t seem literary (though its author is a previous award-winner and one of his works was a New York Times bestseller.) However, it is still cleverly written and, in a fair and just world, would be the sort of thing that would win a Stephen Leacock award — except for the fact that this book’s author is not Canadian. (A case of mistaken identity there: I initially thought Lipsyte was ex-Canuck magazine editor Sam Hiyate, which gave me the impression that he came from north of the border. Sadly (?), no.)
In any event, I feel there’s not a whole lot more that I can or should say about this book, except … go read it! It is quite entertaining and — without meaning to spoil the ending — is ultimately uplifting even if it also winds up being a bit heartbreakingly sad, too. Lipsyte demonstrates in this novel that he is a skilled wordsmith (he should be as he is, after all, a professor at Columbia University). If you need more than that to go on, however, the book is about a twentysomething, slightly overweight man with the stage name of Jonathan Shit. He has changed said name to Jack Shit — which is an in-joke, because the band that he’s in is named the Shits. (So, yes, you can already tell that this is, at the very least, a somewhat transgressive novel even though it comes from a major U.S. publisher.) In any event, at the novel’s outset, his roommate and his bass guitar haven’t been seen for days. Taking place in guitar shops and various dive bars so divey that you almost need a tetanus shot to frequent them, Jonathan (or Jack) tries to solve the mystery of what happened to his friend and guitar and also tries to figure out what has happened to his love life and his relationships with other people.
Despite being somewhat grimy, No One Left to Look for You is sincerely a touching novel. There is a scene midway through the book between Jonathan/Jack and his mother that takes place while both are waiting for a bus that may make you, once again, catch your breath with how realistically charged it is and it is quite brimming with non-saccharine emotion. Put another way, it is a slightly humourous part of the book, so it also winds up not being overly sentimental. It’s this juggling act between laugh-out-loud hi-lar-i-ous lines and poignant moments that make this book the standout it is. This is becoming somewhat of a cliché in my reviews, but this is a novel that the less you know about it before reading it, the better. It truly is a pleasant surprise. What’s more, it is also a very quick read, so if you are the type of person who doesn’t like reading novels, but has an interest in the early ’90s or punk music, then this might be the sort of thing you could want to take a crack at! Honestly, reading No One Left to Come Looking for You was like inhaling a breath of fresh air — which is quite the compliment knowing how closely I followed the grunge scene while growing up — even if one scene early on does take place in a rank bathroom with an overflowing toilet.
If you want to be particularly ambitious, I recommend pairing this novel with the similarly themed A Cigarette Lit Backwards by Tea Hacic-Vlahovic. While the latter novel (also recently published) is written from a more feminine point-of-view, both books mine a certain nostalgia for various punk rock music scenes of the past. However, even if you decide to skip that book (and I hope that you don’t because it is well on par with this one), there’s no denying that there might be an interest among middle-aged readers to revisit aspects of their youth — musical, cultural, or otherwise. To that end, and speaking for No One Left to Come Looking for You, there should be nothing more fantastic than curling up with this on a cold winter’s weekend and enjoying watching an author riff so seemingly effortlessly on a much-derided musical genre among smug-nosed Boomers. If you don’t have a pole stuck up your rear end, and enjoy reading books that may be a little off the beaten path, No One to Come Looking for You is an excellent read, any way you slice it. Nearly flawless, this is just a flat-out enjoyable book. And, sometimes, that’s all you need — make no mistake about it!
Sam Lipsyte’s No One Left to Come Looking for You was published by Simon & Schuster on December 6, 2022.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
