...writer Victor Lodato seems to be something of a polymath. His second novel, the wonder-filled and magisterial Edgar and Lucy, certainly feels as though it was written by one, so wide-ranging is it in its concerns and themes, and so ardent is it in its desire to bring everything — life, love, family, loneliness, magic, spiritualism and death — together in its pages ... Lodato's skill as a poet manifests itself on every page...His skill as a playwright shines in every piece of dialogue...And his skill as a fiction writer displays itself in his virtuoso command of point of view ... The book pushes the boundaries of beauty, inviting the reader to be like Edgar, who, even when staring at litter on the ground, 'knew that these things were garbage, but at the same time he could feel their tiny breathless souls.'
[Lodato] repeats the impressive trick of creating a character so peculiar, vivid and appealing (think of Owen Meany minus the messianic complex) that Edgar becomes this ambitious novel’s enduring reward ... On every page, Lodato’s prose sings with a robust, openhearted wit, making Edgar and Lucy a delight to read ... One of the many things Lodato renders trenchantly in these pages is how a child in a disrupted home becomes the reluctant vessel of conflict ... For all of its existential searching, Edgar and Lucy ends up being a riveting and exuberant ride.
It’s a dark mirror of Lodato’s debut, filled with menace and grief that takes no less than seven weighty passages to play out ... These characters hurtle toward a climax that begins to defy plausibility—the author ties things up with a jarring change in voice at the end—but readers who make it that far are apt to be enraptured already. A domestic fable about grief and redemption likely to leave readers emotionally threadbare.
