Tom Leclair

Passing Through: a Novel Tom Leclair

Passing Through is a stand-alone novel that completes the trilogy begun with Passing Off and Passing On. Former pro basketball player, tour guide, and memoirist, Michael Keever is recruited to teach Creative Non-Fiction at Queen City College. Having faked his qualifications, Keever at-tempts to deceive his family, students, colleagues, admin-istrators, and friends with increasingly comic schemes. When he receives anonymous emails that accuse him of fictionalizing his earlier autobiographies, Keever needs to discover the author of the emails. His absurd detection boomerangs and his troubles multiply, ultimately forcing him into a plot of imposture that takes him to Algeria and puts both his new life as an academic and his life itself in jeopardy. Passing Through resembles a Rabbit novel rewritten by the Richard Russo of Straight Man or the Don DeLillo of White Noise. "No game, no gain" is Keever's motto. Le-Clair fools with academic protocols, plays with conventions of travel writing and autobiography, and ultimately plays against the academically trained reader with unreliable stories nested within probable fabrications within possible inventions. Humorous in its bumbling hero and fumbled plots, Passing Through also has a satiric edge in its presentation of a private college as a drive-through business.