Panorama City - Antoine Wilson
Oppen Porter, the twenty eight- year-old narrator of Antoine Wilson’s second novel, is a self-described “slow absorber” who is holed up in a hospital room sure that he is about to die. Now he is talking into a tape recorder, explaining to his about to- be-born son why he left home after his father’s death and headed to Panorama City (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24), an extraordinarily ordinary patch of suburbia in southern California, to become “a man of the world.” Oppen’s experiences there and the characters he encounters, from his odd and uncompromising aunt to a street philosopher and ex-con named Paul, frame this story of innocence, life’s vicissitudes, and self discovery. Part picaresque and part bildungsroman, Panorama City is charming, touching, and funny all in one.
