'The Pinch,' a magical new novel by Steve Stern - Washington Post
Lenny Sklarew is a likable young ne’er-do-well who lives in a deserted Memphis neighborhood nicknamed “the Pinch,” works in a failing used bookstore called the Book Asylum and deals drugs in a flourishing dive bar. Lenny is living in interesting times, but the best parts of this indefatigably funny and imaginative novel by Steve Stern are set in an even more interesting time: the second decade of the 20th century, when Lenny’s empty neighborhood was a... These enchanted events and hundreds of others are recounted in a privately printed book written half a century earlier by Muni Pinsker and found by Lenny in the Book Asylum. Muni’s book (also called “ The Pinch ”) claims to be a history of the neighborhood, but a history that includes the future as well as the past. That clerk is understandably intrigued and sets out to read the whole of Muni’s book, “a bible-thick doorstop in a cheap cloth binding. ” Less understandably, he reads it from cover to cover instead of finding the parts about himself and reading them first as anyone else would. Source: www.washingtonpost.com
