RaveThe Globe and MailAt first glance, Lipsyte\'s newest novel, The Ask, doesn\'t seem to offer much thematic progression [from his previous novel Home Land] ... The Ask\'s sluggish storyline...has an exotic weapon as part of its finale, [and] is made up for by the author\'s scathing insult comedy ... While the many pleasures in Home Land came solely from the pyrotechnic pithiness found in its narrator\'s self-loathing, the writing in The Ask is toned down to create a more grounded portrait of a disappointed person in a less satirically American backdrop—a gentrifying neighborhood in Queens ... Lipsyte\'s novel, ultimately, gives readers a portrait of a character who realizes, as he approaches middle age, that he was given too much and asked too little.
