Description
I, Lloyd Stollman by Rob Sullivan
Print ISBN: 978-1-936364-40-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-936364-41-7
Price: $15.99
Fiction
185 pages
After twenty-five years in an anonymous cubical at the DMV, sixty-two-year-old Lloyd Stollman decides to outfit himself as a cowboy, and introduces himself to the world as a bit player in famous movies. His success in passing himself off as someone he isn’t is liberating and he begins to explore new personas he can inhabit. But there is a downside, which Lloyd realizes when one of his characters, as charming as he appears at first, turns out to be a killer. Rather than Lloyd’s portraying someone he has created, Lloyd is being inhabited by his creations, one after another. The reader is taken on a surprising, wild ride and discovers, along with Lloyd, the dark, complex web of possibilities that comes to life as each of his creations meets the world. Recalling Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I, Lloyd Stollman provides the reader an unnerving and enticing study of what’s possible when repression is unbridled.
Reviews
“[Rob Sullivan] can draw you in very quickly and then you see that he’s taking you places that you didn’t expect.”
— Tony Abatemarco
“Sullivan is an iconoclast on many levels—a grinning, gap-toothed, Irish good-looker who knows how to juggle words as well as things…. He spins comedy out of hateful encounters…”
— Sylvie Drake, Los Angeles Times
“In Sullivan’s hands, Stollman’s monologue is by turns funny, insightful, and terrifying, but always razor sharp… The Paul Schrader-penned 1976 film Taxi Driver is mentioned a few times, and the book feels in many ways like a lost Schrader film. For readers who don’t mind spending time with the thoughts and actions of a disturbed, solitary character, this book will offer a memorable ride. A witty and transgressive tale about the villains that lurk within us.”
—Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2024
“The opening lines explaining Lloyd’s initial foray…uses impeccable logic to enter his world:
“I only started to feel right when I put on my first disguise. Before that, I had been a half-person, a shadow, a ghost, a nonentity, anonymous, dead. But once I put that disguise on, I felt like I fit in my own body, that I belonged, that I was part of society, like I had a place, like I was somebody.” In fact, “It was such a relief. Not to have to be myself.”
“As relief turns to dread and disaster, readers follow an intense story made all the more pointed and powerful by the use of the first person, which allows readers to enter into the logic and surprises that buffet an urban disguise artist’s life trajectory.
“Rob Sullivan provides powerful images and insights throughout Lloyd’s story, crafting a series of events that send him on expeditions through relationships, uncharted territory, and emotional responses that have not been a part of his prior life. The psychological and social revelations permeate a story so intensely revealing that even acts of cross-dressing are realistically presented and thought-provoking at every step of the way…
“Libraries and readers, seeking powerful psychological novels of transitions and revelations will find that I, Lloyd Stollman offers especially intriguing insights into the opportunities and dilemmas for juggling alternate personalities and possibilities.
“Even stronger are the insights suitable for psychology groups and book club circles that revolve around the assumption of not just new personalities, but responsibility for their incarnation, growth, and perhaps inevitable outcomes.
“I, Lloyd Stollman provides a rare opportunity for a bird’s-eye view of life through the changes a sixty-two-year-old man experiences through choices both of his own making and outside of his control. It’s intense, riveting, and hard to put down.”
— D. Donovan of Midwest Book Review
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