I'll Let You Go

Bruce Wagner has written twelve novels and bestsellers, including the famous “Cellphone Trilogy,” I’m Losing You (PEN USA finalist), I’ll Let You Go and Still Holding), Dead Stars, The Empty Chair, and the PEN/Faulkner-finalist Chrysanthemum Palace. He wrote the screenplay for David Cronenberg’s film Maps to the Stars, for which Julianne Moore won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. In 1993, Wagner wrote and created the visionary mini-series Wild Palms for producer Oliver Stone and co-wrote (with Ullman) three seasons the acclaimed Tracey Ullman’sState of the Union. He has written essays and articles for the New York Times, Artforum and the New Yorker

Praise for I’ll Let You Go  “A panoramic portrait of Los Angeles, from the homeless shelters of the inner city to the middle class suburbs of the Valley to the princely mansions of Bel Air . . . Mr. Wagner delineates his characters with such sympathy and verve, such a sharp eye for the status details that reveal their social standing (and secret pipe dreams), that they become palpable human beings, real in their griefs and yearnings and illusions…. Luxuriant, bewitching prose.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times  “Wagner’s competing mythologies of millennial California mesh with the precision of gold-plated gears in a luxury timepiece. Up-to-the-minute cultural allusions . . . complement a vision that is rich with comic plot threads and a brash authorial voice but also tinged with melancholy. . . . A sincere exploration of life, death and immortality.”—People  “Wagner’s astute portrayal of the follies of the rich is exceeded by his skill at rendering the lives of the poor. The chapters on Amaryllis, for example, are worthy of a latter-day Dickens. . . . The book succeeds, for it champions elements of fiction too often neglected in contemporary literature—plot, character, suspense—elements proved by the Victorians to have an enduring capacity to delight.”—The Washington Post  “A tour de force.”—Library Journal“A masterful, modern-day fantasy of millionaires and madmen, fathers and sons, reality and dreams.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)  “The author of the audacious I’m Losing You extends his comic vision to epic proportions…. Proust meets Prozac along the class divide in Los Angeles…. [A] smart, funny novel.”—Book  “While The Corrections was the family epic that topped every critic’s list in 2001, Bruce Wagner’s I’ll Let You Go is the saga posed to carry the literary baton this year. . . . The language is elaborate and rich. . . . A rich Tenenbaums for the West Coast set? Yes, and so much more.”—Dailycandy.com  “Wagner’s Los Angeles [is] a city overflowing with eccentric philanthropists and violent madmen.”—The New Yorker  “If Dickens were writing in 21st century Los Angeles, he might produce something akin to Bruce Wagner’s capacious new novel. . .. Wagner’s narrative style is unique—sometimes lushly romantic, other times acerbically satiric. . . . [Wagner] manages to pull it all off with considerable aplomb.”—BookPage“Dickens? Forster? These are heavy comparisons for a . . . contemporary writer to live up to, but Wagner compels you to think along these lines. . . . A book that is clearly intended to be a major novel and, more often than not, manages to succeed. [Wagner’s] is one of the more exciting talents in American fiction.”—The Sunday Star-Ledger  “I’ll Let You Go is thoroughly engrossing and destined for greatness.”—Time Out New York, Fiction Roundup  “Wagner revels in the opulent lifestyles of his eccentric cast of characters and . . . requests the reader’s indulgence in allowing him this luxurious revelry. . . . It’s well worth the time.”—Booklist  “The first must-read novel of the year.”—Gear  “An elegant and bitter family saga that owes as much to Dickens as it does to Chinatown.”—Talk, Talk Ten  “Wagner takes so many chances, breaks so many rules and gets away with it so spectacularly that it seems as if he has dragged Dickens into the 21st century by his boot heels. . . . A great novel for the new millennium.”—Booksweek, The Sunday Oregonian“The sprawling, Dickensian story [Wagner] tells in I’ll Let You Go, one of compassionate oddballs simply trying to find a little love, is something every substance-starved reader will savor.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution  “[Wagner] continues his exploration of the social customs of the Left Coast. [I’ll Let You Go] ups the ante with a ripping neo-Victorian novel centered around the three-generation Trotter dynasty of Bel-Air . . . . Once begun, I’ll Let You Go doesn’t.”—Flaunt  “A robustly populated, fiendishly complicated story of class inequity and high romance. . . . There are moments when a reader thinks Wagner himself must be a foundling, some long-lost bastard son of Dickens and Jane Austen…. Hugely lovely. . . . and, for all its debt to the past, altogether singular.”—San Francisco Chronicle  “A modern-day book of marvels. . . .”—The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Virginia  “A stunning saga of modern Los Angeles. . . . Outrageously extravagant. . . . It’s astonishing, this novel. No other word quite fits.”—Polly Paddock, Times Union Albany  Praise for Bruce Wagner"He is a visionary posing as a farceur."—Salman Rushdie“If it was the promise of laughter that first drew me to Wagner’s work, it is his language that has kept me hooked… Marveling at his comic and linguistic gifts, at his sheer storytelling verve – his ability to handle large ensembles of characters and keep numerous narrative balls in the air while at the same time shooting flames from his mouth and balancing a naked lady on his nose – I nevertheless introduce Wagner’s work to my writing students with a caution: Don’t try this at home.”—Sigrid Nunez"Bruce Wagner is Hollywood’s master of satire."—Sam Wasson, author of The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood"Wagner is the James Joyce whose Dublin is Hollywood."—David Cronenberg"Bruce Wagner writes really wonderfully about that whole milieu [of Hollywood] and its gothic vanity."—Emma Cline“I’m a big Bruce Wagner fan.”—Father John Misty"Bruce Wagner's stories about Hollywood are the best I've read since F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West."—Terry Southern"Wagner writes like a wizard. His prose writhes and coruscates."—John Updike