In four previous novels and her current, “Empathy,” Schulman has articulated an ongoing dialogue in which her fictional stand-ins, most often young gay women obsessed with cultural and political concerns, yearn to speak the language of their time, and to learn what actions will suffice in a chaotic world. They strain to understand their lives in the context of global changes and local upheavals. They grasp at love as they watch their friends and lovers die. The characters in novelist Sarah Schulman’s fiction struggle to come to terms with their identity in a contemporary urban landscape that has grown increasingly apocalyptic and implausible. If personality is just an adjustment to stress, we may all be the result of the crises we survive.
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