The Art of Falling Apart

a novel by Steven Lawrence Lang

Preorders coming soon

William Link should be on top of the world. He is coming up on his first major gallery exhibition, he’s scored a cavernous studio apartment with the cheapest rent in town, and he has an attractive girlfriend, Sara, who’s well out of his league.

But the pressure is building: He works day and night to prepare for his show, which means relationship with Sara is precarious at best. He drinks too much, and too often, which doesn’t help. And he lives next to an electric guitar virtuoso, Pigeonhole, whose erratic behavior and blaring amplifiers add      just one more layer of chaos to William's already tumultuous life.

But all that’s not the worst of it: William is haunted by disturbing visions of his deceased mother. Not only does she appear to him at all the wrong times, but she seems to be meddling with his paintings.

Along the way William must navigate Sara’s flirtatious sister and supportive, idiosyncratic father; manage his mentor and upstairs neighbor, Vernon, who is on a quest to reconnect with the aliens he believes once abducted him; and wreak vengeance upon Einstein, an eccentric      record store owner who won’t give back William’s favorite robe. All the while William has to worry about what Pigeonhole will do next.

A complicated life to be sure. But most of all, William faces a dilemma: Is he experiencing genuine haunting or slipping into the same mental instability that once consumed his mother? And if his mother’s ghost is real, is he the artist, or is she?

A portion of the proceeds from the book go to Great River School. Great River, a Montessori learning community in St. Paul, Minn., prepares students for their unique roles as responsible and engaged citizens of the world.