Book Review: ‘How to Leave the House,’ by Nathan Newman

HOW TO LEAVE THE HOUSE, by Nathan Newman

I lost count of the number of times Natwest, the protagonist of Nathan Newman’s deft and uproarious debut novel, dropped his phone throughout the course of its 24-hour narrative. Among other places, it falls from his hands in the hallway of his mother’s home, on the sidewalk, on the pavement, in the park, at a bus stop and while he is urinating into a bush. Every fall expands the spider web of cracks on its surface that at one point pierce the skin of his swiping finger.

Other characters are also afflicted with Teflon hands; there’s a teenager whose own cracked screen infuriates her grandmother, a teacher who yanks a little too hard at her charger cord upon waking up and a drunk photographing his late mother’s memorial bench. Glance up from your shattered glass, Newman seems to be saying. Speak to your neighbors. Look them right in the eyes, or, if the opportunity arises, deep into their mouths. (More on this later.) Imagine all you could discover about them, and yourself, in a single rotation of the Earth.

After failing his A level exams and entering a “four-year purgatory of retakes, pandemics and coffee-shop employment,” Natwest has reached his final day in his small English hometown before heading off to university, where he intends to pursue a career in art criticism. The future is one swiftly approaching sunrise away, but all he seems to care about on this particular day is retrieving a lost package.

Though an email claims it’s been delivered, Natwest’s barren doorstep suggests otherwise. He leaves the home he shares with his urbane and weary mother, Penny, and sets out on an anxious quest to retrieve it before anyone else has a chance to see what’s inside.

Thus begins our hero’s loquacious journey through what he initially perceives as an “idiotic town” filled with “strange, ordinary inhabitants who may or may not have interior lives as interesting as his.” But we quickly discover — as does Natwest, however reluctantly — that his is far from the only life filled with intrigue and tumult.

Among them, his octogenarian neighbor Joan, who begins her harrowing first attempt at dating as a widow with a recipe for microwaved coq au vin; Dr. Richard Hung, the town’s “ambivalently straight” dentist preparing for that night’s exhibition of his large paintings of “the human mouth”; Natwest’s ex-boyfriend Georgie, who nicknamed him after a ubiquitous British bank when they were teenagers, only for it to stick thanks to Natwest’s desire “to mythologize himself”; and Mishaal, the local imam, whose debilitatingly narrow perception of life and identity results in a passion for black-and-white films. Advice from Natwest’s former English teacher Mrs. Pandey, a lovelorn, 30-something cancer survivor, shimmers over his wanderings: “Imagine every work of art as perfect.”

During a moment of profound loneliness, Natwest characterizes his detour-filled day as “merely a series of brief distractions,” and the binaries suggested to him by Mishaal reverberate long after they part ways. Is he a Lennon or a McCartney? Kierkegaard or Hegel? Gay or bisexual? This way or that?

It may sound peculiar that a story featuring chapter-length text message exchanges and a hysterical egg fight during a gender reveal party could contain such potent, moving allusions to philosophy and James Joyce, let alone be filled with richly observed artistic references reminiscent of Ali Smith, but Newman weaves the analytical and the absurd with a raucous grace. Like Natwest, “How to Leave the House” is generous and witty, as bewitched by aesthetics as it is certain of the virtues of good old-fashioned compassion.

Toward the novel’s audacious two-part conclusion, which I instantly flipped back and reread upon finishing, Natwest is confronted with “a rude confirmation” that he had “never been the main character.”

Fortunately for readers of Newman’s profound — and profoundly sidesplitting — debut, Natwest is precisely that. His eventful day is reminiscent of a painting of teeth by Dr. Hung, jarring and peculiar at first glance, but urging us to peer inward and find something perfect in the space between the cracks.

HOW TO LEAVE THE HOUSE | By Nathan Newman | Viking | 315 pp. | $29