MY YEAR AT THE GOOD BEAN CAFÉ

In Luetkemeyer’s novel, a struggling writer imagines the histories of the people he encounters at a local coffee shop.

Adrian Lomachenko gives up a profitable career as a banker to become a writer, moves to the small town of Jacksonville, Oregon, and decides to spend a year writing one story each month inspired by the people he encounters at the Good Bean Café—specifically, stories about “unlikely and inexplicable” events in each person’s life. Guided by his “muse,” Miranda (a stuffed monkey), Lomachenko often speaks directly to the reader, addressing them by the name Sam as he tells the often implausible, frequently impossible, and always fascinating tales of his neighbors. He recounts the bizarre history of the cafe’s cook, the heir to a fictional kingdom who fled after encountering his doppelgänger; he describes one man’s cross-country journey to buy drugs that turns out to be a drug trip itself; he imagines a conversation with a woman after finding her headstone in the local graveyard; and he shares a horrific tale of spousal murder. The stories are each complete narratives capable of standing alone, but they are also full of connections, with characters, locations, and themes recurring throughout the novel, creating a single unified piece of fiction. The author’s prose is considered and often clever (concluding the cook’s story, Lomachenko acknowledges that “the heir apparent to the Kingdom of Sandu makes a mean breakfast burrito”), though it can occasionally grow ponderous, particularly as the more art-minded characters discuss their interests. The book is dialogue-heavy and omits quotation marks, which may not be to all readers’ taste, but the stories are fundamentally compelling, with solid pacing and coherent plots that keep the reader engaged throughout. The stories paint a vivid picture of Lomachenko’s community, and the framing device is generally effective. The book concludes with Lomachenko’s own story, an outcome that brings together elements of the earlier chapters in often surprising ways, providing a satisfying resolution.

A complex and intriguing novel told in stories.