Review: ‘Am I Alone Here?’

Devoted readers will answer Peter Orner's question 'Am I Alone Here?” with a resounding no. The question serves as the title of his new book, which is subtitled 'Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live.”

Orner, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is the author of two novels (favorites of this reviewer) and two story collections. His new book dives deeply into his reading and writing life as well as into the family relationships - with his father, with his ex-wife, with relatives about whom he knows only fragments, and more - that shape his life and work.

Many readers will recognize themselves in Orner's descriptions of the role of books in his life. 'Often,” he writes in a chapter in which he considers Eudora Welty's work, 'I'm less prone to having an actual experience than I am to relating what I'm experiencing to something, anything, I've read. It's as if I don't quite exist in real time. I have a friend, a yoga teacher, who says I don't live in the present, and I say, who wants to live in the present?”

Orner discusses a wide array of literature in 'Am I Alone Here?” and I suspect most readers will be familiar with some, but certainly not all, of it. The author does an excellent job of sharing the key details - in terms of plot, aesthetics and themes - without giving the sense that he is 'spoiling” the story or book about which he writes. Rather, his thoughts about the books that are important to him encourage us to seek out those books, while also, perhaps, gently nudging us toward more reflection about the books we love.