The book is populated by people who appear in his life but not Didion’s. This can leave your head spinning, as if an acquaintance is breathlessly telling story after story about names you can’t quite place.

Less a revelation of life with Didion than a poetic, ruminative chronicle of Leadbeater’s struggle to synthesize the author’s sophisticated world with that of his lower-middle-class family.

This is ultimately a book about distances. The distance between Leadbeater’s nascent, frustrated literary efforts and the great body of work that lies behind Didion.

Though Didion didn’t live to see this work, one senses she would have been equally delighted with her protégé’s literary talent and, not least, his unblinking honesty..

In hypnotic prose that pulses with life and longing, The Uptown Local explores the fault lines of class, family, loss and creativity. It is a love letter to a cultural icon..

A stirring account.

At the line level, the text is expansive and poetic, full of vivid imagery and small, well-voiced epiphanies. However, Leadbeater as the protagonist barely changes throughout the book, partly because the plot’s unifying revelation occurs in the final five pages, leaving little time for readers to see the effect this realization had on his journey..