These Lowly Objects

In These Lowly Objects, Cate McGowan has fashioned one of

the great fictional characters of our time in Jules Lalande,

Dadaist extraordinaire. From his Dickensian childhood

alongside a second cousin (and later, wife), Isobel, McGowan

tracks–in rich, rigorous prose–the Zelig-like Lalande’s

wanderings through fin de siecle Paris as he rubs elbows with

Degas and Cezanne, fights in World War I, lands in New York

with Breton, becomes a professional boxer, hangs out with

Duchamp, and disappears in Cuba–or does he? Enter this

remarkably imagined, enchanted world and discover the

many delights of McGowan’s marvelous creation.
–Robin Lippincott, author of Blue Territory:

A Meditation on the Life and Art of Joan Mitchell
Lyrical, stunning, and deeply strange, Cate McGowan’s novel

concerns a shape-shifting protagonist, Jules Lalande. Lalande

disappeared years ago: various people–his estranged wife

Isobel Wright, journalist Titus Pidgeon, and the people

Pidgeon interviews, including historical figures like Andre

Breton and Marcel Duchamp–chase his scent. McGowan’s

luminous novel tracks their efforts to conjure this enigmatic

poet-painter-performance artist-thief-con man-duke-trauma

victim-killer-healer. Twisty and original, These Lowly Objects
is fundamentally about self-hood, its precariousness and

perishability, and its surprising capacity for resurrection.
–Kim Magowan, author of Undoing and The

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