This canny potboiler about the shock waves of an unexpected death has its creaky moments, but on the whole it is a piercing evocation of the enervation and essential loneliness of domestic life. Nick Framingham is a plodding, small-town, middle-management type whose friendship with Rob Castor, a Jay McInerney-like literary prodigy, has provided him with vicarious thrills since childhood. Rob’s sudden reappearance in Nick’s life sets off a landslide of recrimination that gradually accumulates the sinister momentum of a nightmare.

In its structure and tone, Now You See Him at times echoes Donna Tartt’s The Secret History—not a lucky comparison for most novels—but Gottlieb’s talent is for unmasking the fatal chinks in lives glamorous and humdrum alike. Nick’s self-absorption and limited powers of observation are the linchpins of his demise, yet Gottlieb’s characterization is almost entirely without the self-pity that mars many such first-person constructs. The homoerotic subtext of the relationship between the novel’s protagonist and his shadowy counterpart would have benefited from a more daring exposition, and at times the novel’s mechanics stretch credibility. Those criticisms aside, however, Now You See Him builds an absorbing and even tender narrative out of a sordid web of disaster. From The Brooklyn Rail, March 2008 ( )

This book is about the childhood friend (Nick) of a charismatic celebrity writer (Rob). Rob shot his girlfriend dead before committing suicide, and the resulting effect on his friends and family are still being felt months later, after the press has finally died down. Nick has a mid-life crisis that finds his wife getting frustrated by his continuing grief for his old friend, and she manages to drag him into couples’ therapy. Meanwhile Nick has hooked up with Belinda, his first girlfriend and Rob’s sister. There was lots of introspection and angst in this one, and none of the characters came out particularly sympathetic. But I did enjoy reading this, particularly the surprising twists at the end. ( )

Now You See Him is a terrific first novel chock full of mood and subtlety and beautiful writing. Plus, I'm a sucker for an unreliable narrator. ( )

I knew I was going to like this within a couple of pages of starting it: the author has a pleasant rolling style of prose that picks you up like an ocean wave and keeps you bobbing along - and he keeps the tension high by dropping each strand of the plot at just the right moment and picking up somewhere else.

Told from the point of view of Nick, who had an unhappy childhood, in particular having an unsatisfactory relationship with his father, and who lost his best friend in dramatic circumstances, it traces the effects on Nick's marriage as he becomes steadily more isolated from his wife. Every aspect of the story is observed beautifully, and as more of the circumstances emerge, it provides the reader with an opportunity to consider whether or not they actually sympathise with Nick. A brilliant novel; one of my reads of the year for sure. ( )

OK, so maybe 2-and-a-half stars. Ann Patchett liked it, I wanted to like it, too. But I was very disappointed that I could predict all of the 'twists.' So much for the thriller part. I thought that Nick, the narrator, was almost obnoxiously self-absorbed, his wife Lucy annoyed me with her single dimension, and the sordid affair just creeped me out, because I could see that particular plot twist even then.

I was glad to have the book to avoid conversations on the train from Boston to Albany, but my standards are dramatically lowered in that kind of situation. ( )