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The Plain dealer – December 31, 2005 --
Lychack, William -- The Wasp Eater --NEW IN PAPERBACK -- Novel
pertectly captures frustration of a child of divorce -- Vikas
Turakhia Special to The Plain Dealer
When Anna catches her husband in bed with a waitress in the opening
pages of William Lychack's The Wasp Eater (Mariner, $10), she
announces that the marriage is over. She decides this without
hesitation, but her 10-year-old son, Daniel, finds the sudden change
difficult. With his father gone, Daniel's home becomes more like the
empty skin of an animal than the place he lived," devoid of
vitality...
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New York Times Book Review - October 24, 2004 --
The Age of Innocence -- By Polly Shulman -- In THE WASP EATER
(Houghton Mifflin, $21), William Lychack’s take on anguish of
growing up, there’s no war, no murder, only a collection of small
thefts and emotional betrayals. This spare, meticulous novel opens
out like a poem, its deceptively casual images bearing a univers of
weight. The story unfolds in a Connecticut mill town in 1979. When
ten-year-old Daniel’s mother, Anna, kicks his father, Bob, out of
the house for sleeping with a waitress...
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Los Angeles Times -- October 17, 2004 -- By Mark
Rozzo -- THE WASP EATER, by William Lychack. Houghton Mifflin,
164 pp., $21.-- The wasp eater of this seductive novella is a
10-year-old named Daniel from Cargill Falls, Conn. The creaky old
mill town has seen better days, and so has Daniel's family. When his
window-washer dad, Bob, is caught going at it with an unidentified
woman in the family's house, Daniel's mother, Anna, tosses him out.
The world suddenly seems inexplicable, as does some of Daniel's
behavior. With Anna jabbering about what to do about her...
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Birmingham News -- Sunday, October 03, 2004 --
”Wasp Eater” has the sting of heartbreak -- By Susan Swagler --
How much betrayal is too much to bear? It depends, of course, on the
person. Or on the writer. William Lychack, in his debut novel, "The
Wasp Eater" (Houghton Mifflin Company, $21), explores this question
through the eyes of a young boy whose family is imploding. In an old
New England mill town in 1979, 10-year-old Daniel's mother, Anna,
throws his out father of the house after learning of his
infidelity...
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People Magazine -- September 20, 2004 -- THE WASP
EATER by Bill Lychack -- A lot of novelists toil mightily to
dazzle, shock, preach or just prove they’re way smarter than we are,
but the best writers usually have no such goals. Lychack’s debut is
an unpretentious, quiet-but-not whispery book that engages the
reader through the eyes of 10-year-old Daniel, who suddenly
discovers that his parents have split when his mother
matter-of-factly announces that his father won’t be home for
dinner...
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Minneapolis Star Tribune -- September 19, 2004 --
Book review: 'The Wasp Eater' by William Lychack -- By Cherie
Parker, Special to the Star Tribune -- For all the grand events
dreamed up in fiction to illustrate the great truths of life, for
all the horrific deaths, the righteous crusades and the exotic love
affairs, the most intense dramas in real life often take place on a
smaller scale, at occasions momentous only to those directly
involved. In "The Wasp Eater," the sweet and poignant novel by
William Lychack, one of these little tragedies plays out as a
10-year-old boy watches his parents' marriage disintegrate...
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San Diego Union Tribune -- August 22, 2004 -- The
child's story -- 'The Wasp Eater' is a poignant look at a
disintegrating family. -- Reviewed by Seth Taylor -- When a
marriage disintegrates, there comes a point, after countless
shouting matches and shattered plates, when someone speaks the
final, stony truth: It's over. No more false reconciliation, no more
pretending for the kids. -- The Wasp Eater, William Lychack,
Houghton Miffilin, 164 pages, $21 -- In William Lychack's debut
novel "The Wasp Eater," that moment arrives on the first page,
marking not the end of a story, but the beginning. Ten-year-old
Daniel is calmly informed by his mother Anna that his father won't
be coming home for dinner...
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USA Today - August 19, 2004 -- Divorce stings a tender boy in ‘The Wasp Eater’
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By Anne Stephenson Special for USA TODAY -- There's
always enough misery to go around when a marriage fails, but none is as
undeserved as the secret anguish of a child. In The Wasp Eater, William
Lychack's deeply movingfirst novel, we watch as a 10-year-old boy navigates
the emotional minefield in which his family spends its last days together.
It's 1979. Daniel Cussler and his parents live in a unnamed New England
town. In the opening pages, His distraught mother, Anna, tells him that his
father will not be home for dinner that night...
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San Francisco Chronicle -- Sunday, August 15, 2004
-- The Wasp Eater by William Lychack, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN; 164
PAGES; $21 -- Marianne Rogoff -- In William Lychak's first novel,
the child is witness. Daniel, a 10-year-old living in New England,
sees everything, processes it, trying to grasp the mysterious,
mistaken ways of adults: his mother, Anna; his father, Bob; and his
grown cousin Joelyn. Bob has been tossed out for the usual reason,
an affair. He wants back in. When he knocks, Anna and the boy hide
in the attic until he moves on...
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BookPage - August 2004 -- Made strong by grief -- By
Mike Parker -- There is a price to pay for infidelity. In William
Lychack’s first novel, THE WASP EATER, the protagonists are
antagonists, wrestling each other for a shot at happiness, whatever
that ambiguous descriptor might mean. Anna is a woman betrayed by
her husband’s infidelity. She asks for no explanation, as no
explanation would be sufficient. Forgiveness is not an option. In a
fit of controlled rage, she throws everything her husband owns into
the yard and changes the locks. Stalked by her own inner demons and
unable to sleep, Anna scuffs across the floor in her robe, her hair
wrapped in a towel, pondering how life got so dark...
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Kirkus - Starred Review - July 15, 2004 -- Lychack,
William -- THE WASP EATER -- Houghton Mifflin (192 pp) -- $21.00
August 9, 2004 -- A boy witnesses the break up of his family in a
heart-stopping first novel. Anna is clear: Her 20 year-old-marriage
to Bob is over, done, kaput. She’d caught him cheating, in their
own bed, no less, but the final straw was his “shit-eating grin.”
This is happening in 1979 in Cargill Falls, Connecticut, where
ex-Marine Bob washes windows and Anna works at a department store.
The sudden rupture leaves their only child, ten-year old Daniel,
feeling miserably torn. He’s ashamed to find his father’s
clothes hanging on the front yard bushes, and so he retrieves them:
but when Bob shows up outside his window at night, looking pathetic,
Dan keeps a poker face...
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Library Journal -- Starred Review --June 15, 2004
-- Lychack, William -- The Wasp Eater -- Houghton, Aug. 2004
c.178p. ISBN 0-618-30444-1 $21 -- Just when the dysfunctional family
drama seems entirely wrung out, along comes a book so freshly
original that it seems to have invented the genre. What’s so
remarkable here is the understatedness, the quietly intense writing
carefully containing more emotion than many louder novels have to
show. Original, too, is the impulse to heal rather than to break
away--however mixed the outcome. As the novel opens, Daniel’s
mother announces that his father is not coming home for dinner. In
fact, she’s thrown him out for philandering...
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Booklist -- June 1, 2004 -- The Wasp Eater --
William Lychack -- Lychack's theme of a broken family is a common
one, but his photographic eye for detail sets this first novel
apart. When 10-year-old Daniel's mother, Anna, finds her husband,
Bob, cheating on her, she throws his clothes out on the curb and
tells him never to come back. But "aimless and
swashbuckling" Bob can't stay away. He visits Daniel's window
at night, chatting until the wee hours. Later, when Daniel
disappears to New York to try to retrieve his mother's ring from a
pawn shop, Bob follows and whisks him off on a multistate journey,
their time together "brief and perfect and doomed." The
small towns they visit, the stains on motel walls, the half-kidding,
half-serious way Bob communicates with Daniel--all come alive with
Lychack's deft telling...
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