The Biology of Luck 

 

The Biology of Luck is a story that bursts onto the page and into your imagination, shimmering with life. From the first page I could tell it was far from just another tale set against a New York City backdrop.

Jacob M. Appel tells the story of Larry Bloom, an unattractive tour guide who is hopelessly in love with charismatic free-spirit, Starshine Hart. Larry has spent the last two years immortalising Starshine in his as-yet unpublished novel, also entitled The Biology of Luck.
Now he’s set to play his trump card. He has a date with Starshine and an envelope from a publishing house in his pocket.
The novel takes the reader on a journey through the day leading up to the date, alternating between

Larry’s perspective and chapters from his manuscript. Here’s where it gets tricky. Larry’s novel tells the story of Starshine’s life on the day leading up to the date, the day he feels he will win her heart.  The result teams whimsy, grit and metafiction in a spunky metropolitan fairy tale.

When Appel pitched the book to his publisher, he described it as an anti-novel. In a way, Appel does indeed play with the genre.  More notably, Appel was inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses. Like its more famous predecessor, the entire novel takes place in a single day. Where Joyce’s Leopold Bloom traverses Dublin, Larry Bloom wanders through New York, with the narrative creating a love letter to the city.

New York City lives large in the pages, but it’s a different New York to the one thrown before us in countless movies, TV shows and books. It’s the New York smelling of stale urine, cured meats and diesel. It’s a New York with veterans panhandling at McDonalds, women dressed for church waiting at post offices, dead bodies in the street, picnics in the Trinity churchyard, the Walt Whitman statue in Battery Park and beautiful girls on bicycles.
It’s a realistic portrait of the world’s most idealised city – gritty but charming in a distinct way. The descriptions leap out at readers, poised to create nostalgia in those who know New York and wanderlust in those who have never visited the bustling metropolis.

As Rita, the journalist with a tendency to miss a scoop, puts it in the novel, “One never knows what will happen on the streets of the Big Old Apple. That’s the amazing thing about New York, isn’t it?”
Much as Larry takes his tourists around the city, his narrative voice showcases distinct suburbs to the reader, weaving through the city as we learn more about him, his life and of course, his muse, the illustrious Starshine.