"Up front: I, uh, know this author. Real, real well. So there’s no claim to impartiality here. Lots of other good reviews to choose from if that’s what you’re looking for.

I have read this book, or portions of it, many times. I have seen it evolve into what it is now. But when it finally came out, I sat down and read it again, beginning to end, in hardcover. And I have to say, it absolutely slaps. I think this is Lepucki’s best plotted book and features, at its heart, three of my favorite characters of recent fiction.

In addition to pulling off the magic trick of being about literal time travel without succumbing to nostalgia, this book captures so much of the pleasure and pain of parenthood (and how the pleasure of parenting turns into a kind of pain as time passes).

There are a lot of strands here for people who liked California (mainly setting but also the closeness of a young couple against the world) and Woman No. 17 (LA teen culture weirdness, complicated motherhood, etc) but this book, in my opinion, moves faster than either of those and comes together in a tremendously satisfying way.

I like fiction to be specific� to describe a place and a moment in time that only the author can deliver. Time’s Mouth delivers on that, rendering San Francisco in the 50s, Santa Cruz in the 60s, LA in the 80s and 90s (including the stretch of LaCienega near Slauson that throws every new transplant � “what is an oil field doing in LA?�). This is Edan’s LA, you can just tell, and it’s so fun to be in.

And I must say, the author has an ass that won’t quit."