Carroll & Graf, October 2006

Robert Marshall's novel A Separate Reality is set in Phoenix in the early seventies. Mark Grosfeld is a lonely, effeminate twelve year old whose parents are politically active liberal Jews. Mark meets Anna Voigt, a teacher who becomes his mentor. Anna, an ex-hippie poet, encourages Mark to write, and he becomes part of a circle of teenagers who smoke pot and meet at Anna's house for poetry readings. She introduces him to the Beats, Zen Buddhism and the popular seventies pseudo- anthropologist, Carlos Castaneda, author of A Separate Reality. Mark goes on a semi-comic suburban vision quest, trying to conduct his life according to the teachings he uncovers in the books he finds through Anna. While his search progresses, the tensions in his family rise and Mark's quest starts to take a strange and unexpected turn.

Marshall's novel is a portrait of the artist as a young man in the seventies. It's a novel about Jews in the sun-belt diaspora, sprinklers on dead grass, and the smell of creosote in the desert at night. It's a story of rattle snakes and the death rattle of the sixties. It's about Watergate and the history of the left from the Rosenbergs to McGovern. A Separate Reality is also a novel about grief and memory and the complex boundaries of self in a family. Most importantly, A Separate Reality is the story of a counter-cultural crisis of faith and the risks of the desire to be perfect.

"Robert Marshall's unique voice, wry intelligence, sly humor, and genuine understanding of the family romance infuse his first novel. A Separate Reality beautifully depicts the poignant and bizarre condition called adolescence. It's a wonderful, imaginative work."    Lynne Tillman, author of No Lease on Life

"A gentle dream of a novel, precise and careful, about the end of childhood. Robert Marshall takes us deep into the life of a precocious twelve-year-old boy in Arizona in the 1970s. Reading this book was just like being twelve again, with all its confusing complications. A very original, serious, heartfelt piece of work."    Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters

"Robert Marshall casts a spell with his translucent prose and his startling powers of perception. With sensitivity, candor, and disarming humor, he offers a fresh look at the making of an artist. A Separate Reality evokes all the doubts and indignities of adolescence, as well as the deep ambivalence of belonging to an intellectual family. Balanced gracefully between the everyday and the mystical, this novel achieves a transcendence of its own."    Sarah Bynum, author of Madeleine is Sleeping

"A beautifully understated and evocative rendering of what it feels like to grow up as a 'misfit.'  I loved the prose's fidelity to thought's careening process.  Robert Marshall's closeups of youthful sadness and elation, like Truffaut's or Bresson's or Solondz's, have a bitter, alienated clarity."    Wayne Koestenbaum, author of The Queen's Throat