Royal Family

In The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann uses the story of two brothers to construct a haunting series of parallels between the lives of the dispossessed & the anxious middle class. Henry Tyler is a failing private detective in San Francisco. When the love of his life, Irene--who happens to be married to his brother John, an ambitious contract lawyer--commits suicide, he clings despairingly to her ghost. Struggling to turn his grief into something precious, Henry enters into a new life of nightmare beauty & degradation as he attempts to track down the legendary Queen of the Prostitutes. Crafted out of language by turns eloquent, humorous, sensual, & obscene, & full of vividly rendered depictions of lowlife bars, office politics, & hobo camps, here are Vollmann's familiar but ever surprising characters--the seekers, the vigilantes, the hypocrites, the street prostitutes. He has woven their stories into a vivid & unforgettable novel about the eerie paradoxes of possession & loss.Vollmann, William T. is the author of 'Royal Family' with ISBN 9780670891672 and ISBN 0670891673.