The threads of playwright David Adjmi’s debut memoir are woven tightly ... Reality is just as fluid as fiction, and Adjmi deftly plays with this tension ... Adjmi’s prose is so precise and detailed as to bring the reader into the chest cavity of a person suffocating from confusion ... As Lot Six assiduously charts David’s life — from early childhood through college, graduate school and his career — the book becomes an immersive experience, not unlike theater. On every page, readers are tasked with asking themselves the terrifying, beautiful question: What is the story of a life?
... ushers readers into fundamental questions of identity, community and belonging. The writing is vibrant, edgy, scenic and exciting. The figures of Adjmi’s childhood come off the page as though the reader is meeting them in person. Adjmi also emerges as a sensitive and faithful—and funny!—narrator who is keen to notice his own reactions to particular moments and perceptive about how his early experiences fostered a kaleidoscopic inner life that informed both the formation of his identity and the art he would later make.
So suffused with Adjmi’s skill for drama and spectacular vocabulary is this gimlet-eyed personal history of making and being made by art, it is emotionally vast and utterly triumphant.
... the author chronicles in visceral detail his anguished youth and laborious search for his true identity ... Although at times the narrative reads like a long, petulant lament, the author powerfully recounts pain and self-discovery ... Raw revelations make for an engrossing memoir.
