Cast in Doubt

by Lynne Tillman, Wayne Koestenbaum (Introduction)

While the tumultuous 1970s rock the world around them, a collection of aging expatriates linger in a quiet town on the island of Crete, where they have escaped their pasts and their present. Among them is Horace, a gay American writer who fears he has finally reached old age. Friends only frustrate him, and his youthful Greek lover provides little satisfaction. Idling his time away with alcohol and working on a novel that he will never finish, Horace feels closer than ever to his own sorry end.

That is, until a young, enigmatic American woman named Helen joins his crowd of outsiders. In Helen, Horace discovers someone brilliant, beautiful, and stubbornly mysterious — in short, she becomes his absolute obsession.

But as Horace knows, people have a way of preserving their secrets even as they try to forget them. Soon, Helen’s past begins to follow her to Crete. A suicidal ex-lover appears without warning; whispers of her long-dead sister surface in local gossip; and signs of ancient Gypsy rituals come to the fore. Helen vanishes. Deep down, Horace knows that he must find her before he can find any peace within himself.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Here’s an Author’s Bio. It could be written differently. I’ve written many for myself and read lots of other people’s. None is right or sufficient, each slants one way or the other. So, a kind of fiction – selection of events and facts.. So let me just say: I wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old. That I actually do write stories and novels and essays, and that they get published, still astonishes me.

My news is that my 6th novel MEN AND APPARITIONS will appear in march 2018 from Soft Skull Press. It's my first novel in 12 years.

Each spring, I teach writing at University at Albany, in the English Dept., and in the fall, at The New School, in the Writing Dept.

I’ve lived with David Hofstra, a bass player, for many years. It makes a lot of sense to me that I live with a bass player, since time and rhythm are extremely important to my writing. He’s also a wonderful man.

As time goes by, my thoughts about writing change, how to write THIS, or why I do. There are no stable answers to a process that changes, and a life that does too. Writing, when I’m inhabiting its world, makes me happy, or less unhappy. I also feel engaged in and caught up in politics here, and in worlds farther away.

When I work inside the world in which I do make choices, I'm completely absorbed in what happens, in what can emerge. Writing is a beautiful, difficult relationship with what you know and don’t know, have or haven’t experienced, with grammar and syntax, with words, primarily, with ideas, and with everything else that’s been written.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls]

Tillman’s third novel is written in the voice of a pompous and arch aesthete and writer (modelled perhaps on Gore Vidal—although Gore was wittier and not such a Gertrude Stein fan), hard not-at-work on a detective novel in Crete. Horace’s musings on the cast of monied layabouts and impostors living on the island are sufficient to keep the narrative from sinking into ponderous banality, and ultimately his voice is a pleasant and erudite companion. Tillman’s talent seems to lie in channelling character voices (the wise-and-cracking slum-dweller in No Lease on Life, and the cracked-up narrator of American Genius), and this is another distinctive voice captured. Tillman is a voice I revisited during the #readwomen2014 initiative, alongside forays back into Rikki Ducornet, Deborah Levy, Lydia Davis, Tatyana Tolstaya, Xiaolu Guo, Nicola Barker, Ali Smith, Rosalyn Drexler. I discovered the work of Lydie Salvayre, Gerd Brantenberg, Jang Eun-Jin, Emma Tenant, Pamela Zoline, Christine Montalbetti, Ornela Vorpsi, Alona Kimhi, Ann Quin, and Penelope Shuttle, and helped republish six novels by Christine Brooke-Rose and three by Rosalyn Drexler. Here’s an article from Joanna Walsh on this important movement that will extend one hopes without the need of hashtags into the next year and beyond.

[Jessica]

Kudos to Lynne Tillman for sticking with this campy self-absorbed and tedious narrator to the end. While I admired the writing, the caustic archness of the narrator was really wearing, and I did not really enjoy reading the book. And then, surprise! I liked the ending. Quite liked it, and it changed my take on the book entirely.

[Howard P.]

On Cast in Doubt.

I found a great deal of wonderfully rich phrases and thoughts in this book, such that I have saved these to my books of great interest notes. There were times when “Horace’s” obsession with “Helen” wearing, but trudged through all regardless. This book is Bbilliant and of great depth. Thank you Lynne Tillman

[sophie]

dragged, got mildly interesting & then dragged some more. im sure there’s something in there thats beautiful about consciousness and the art of noticing rather than progressing but fuck me.

[Leslie Angel]

Not sure why I read it; wanted to visit Crete and the expat communtiy, I guess. Seemed rather deep and fear it went over my head.