How To Leave the House

DEBUT Natwest is a 23-year-old living with his mother in a small town in England. Tomorrow he will leave for university, but today he goes to the post office for a package he is anxious to retrieve. There he encounters Dr. Hung, his dentist, who is also attempting to retrieve a package that he too has been anxiously awaiting. The two men’s parcels are mixed up, and from there, the story becomes an Odyssean quest as Natwest attempts to track down his package before anyone discovers what’s in it. The story is mildly humorous but ultimately serious, as Natwest grapples with his bisexuality, his origins (he never knew his father), and his complicated relationship with his mother. In places, Newman’s technique approaches the experimental—as the point of view shifts from one character to another, the story begins again from this new point of view; at one point, Newman steps in with an “author’s note” to apprise readers of an image that was expurgated by the publisher.