From the Publisher
Lee Martin was born in Illinois. He earned his MFA from the University of Arkansas, and his Ph.D. From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His stories have been widely published in journals including The Georgia Review, Story, Double-Take, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train Stories. He received a Nebraska Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction (1995) as well as Individual Arts Fellowships in Fiction from the Ohio Arts Council (1987) and the Tennessee Arts Commission (1989).
"Together, the pieces make for a hauntingly coherent first collection, often about pitiful family scenarios in which loyalties are tested, lies offered and exposed, and in which ironies abound. . . . Bleak, midwestern landscapes well serve many of these stark and solid narratives."-Kirkus Reviews
". . . Throughout the book, Martin's writing is sensitive and lucid . . . . The characters he writes about are utterly real . . . their concerns and joys are perfectly identifiable and voiced with passion."-Publishers Weekly
"Most of the stories in this debut collection revolve around the relationship between teen-age sons and their fathers in the Midwest of the 1950s and 60s. Although Lee Martin favors endings in which the young protagonist's world is shattered by a selfish paternal act, he manages to infuse each of these similar situations with its own particular twist . . . . What (his characters) learn . . . is just how easily a life can come apart."-The New York Times Book Review
"The Least You Need to Know is Lee Martin's first book, and a strange and familiar one it is. There must be a thousand stories . . . about the relations of fathers andsons: the hokiest of themes, covered since Telemachus went in search of Odysseus. . . . Martin's real, and promising, gift is to turn this cliche back into the urgent, intensely personal myth of growth it really is, and always has been."-San Jose Mercury News
New York Times Book Review
Most of the stories in this debut collection revolve around the relationship between teen-age sons and their fathers in the Midwest of the 1950s and 60s. Although Lee Martin favors endings in which the young protagonists world is shattered by a selfish paternal act, he manages to infuse each of these similar situations with its own particular twist . . . . What his characters learn . . . is just how easily a life can come apart.
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
The Least You Need to Know . . . demonstrates the authors considerable mastery at rendering with recognizable accuracy small town, middle-class, mid-western America and the people who inhabit it. . . . what these stories share is characters who seem so real that what happens to them matters to us. And Martin writes in a prose so fluid that what we read has the ring of a real voice simply speaking to us.
San Jose Mercury News
The Least You Need to Know is Lee Martins first book, and a strange and familiar one it is. There must be a thousand stories . . . about the relations of fathers and sons: the hokiest of themes, covered since Telemachus went in search of Odysseus. . . . Martins real, and promising, gift is to turn this cliche back into the urgent, intensely personal myth of growth it really is, and always has been.
BookLovers
Martins stories are solidly crafted, imaginative, and stoically compassionate.
Sonora Review
Martin succeeds with his own portraits, with his own skill for precise and intricate detail. . . . the most exciting moments in Martins writing come not from the dramatic tension, but from the swift, tender details that give these characters their humanity and make them more than just figures of tragedy. . . . Despite the characters failings, Martin does not judge or condemn them; instead he handles his characters as the undertaker in Light Opera handles his mourners: Eyes straight ahead, the undertaker advises his son, Dont embarrass them. Dont let them know how precious they are in their grief.
Blue Moon Review
Lee Martin explores loss of innocence and the harsh truths of growing up and growing old. His characters are funny, tragic, often weak and heartbreakingly human. . . . Martins gentle prose style and his ability to turn his plot on a dime, combined with a sense of humor and an appreciation for the tragedy of being human, make The Least You Need to Know worthy of high praise and re-reading.
Publishers Weekly
"When I was a boy," opens the title story in this accomplished debut collection, "my father cleaned up crime scenes. Murders, suicides." This is the starting point for many of these narratives: a teenage 1960s protagonist whose father is in the business of death and whose mother is a bit dreamy and dissatisfied. In "Light Opera," Perry Sievers, an undertaker's child struggling to find a balance between his father's detachment and his own hot rebelliousness, is drawn into a beautiful and frightening act of petit larceny. The father in "The End of Sorry" is a strikebreaker at an abattoir, who unsuccessfully fights his wife's involvement with another man. There are exceptions to the pattern, notably "The Price Is the Price," in which a Jewish father tries to come to terms with his estranged son, a pro wrestler. The most resonant story in the book is "The Welcome Table," in which the Thibodeaux family, caught up in a cemetery scandal, flees to Tennessee seeking anonymity. Instead, father and son start training lunch-counter protesters by allowing them to practice nonviolent responses to verbal abuse, and the family gets caught up in a racial incident that threatens to divide them. Throughout the book, Martin's writing is sensitive and lucid, only occasionally veering into the florid. The characters he writes about are utterly real, if somewhat uniform (the fathers are tough and mysterious, the mothers have quirky hobbies like eggshell painting). But their concerns and joys are perfectly identifiable and voiced with passion. (June)
Kirkus Reviews
A fine debut of seven stories, winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction—all, save one, previously published in literary magazines. Together, the pieces make for a hauntingly coherent first collection, often about pitiful family scenarios in which loyalties are tested, lies offered and exposed, and in which ironies abound.
A number of Martin's dull and witless men (as seen by their teenage sons/narrators) work in death-related jobs, which often cut their families off from normal lives. In the title story, a son witnesses the mental disintegration of his father, who works cleaning up crime scene fatalities. It's a job that satisfies his increasingly bizarre rage for order, an expression of the same obsessive neatness that drives his wife to distraction. "Light Opera" concerns the son of an undertaker who begins to see the appeal of his father's strange life as a constant mourner and affirms it by lying on his father's behalf. A cemetery manager leaves New Hampshire in scandal ("The Welcome Table") and assumes a new identity with his family in Tennessee, where he forces his son into early civil rights involvement, which the son rejects. Indeed, the sins of the parents often bear upon the children in these tales of justice and revenge. A father's job as a scab worker at the local meat-packing plant destroys his son's happy life in "The End of Sorry." In the long "The Price Is the Price," a Jewish merchant in goyish Evansville, Illinois, tries to win back his assimilated son by developing an inexpensive housing project for black people, but the father's business drive gets the better of him. In two short bits, old people join together out of fear ("Small Facts") and contemplate "sin and offense" ("Secrets").
Bleak midwestern landscapes well serve many of these stark and solid narratives.
What People Are Saying
Amy Bloom
Martin's work resists the pull of shiny, look-at-me prose....Martin wants to tell the story. He wants us to know everyone and give them the chance to understand what is happening, even if we're shaking our head at how appalling, how lame, how stupid, how vulnerable we all are.
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