Publisher's Synopsis
This extraordinary novel is a blackly comic epic, a twisted voyage through small-town America, which tells the story of a brilliant, neurotic man desperately in search of love. Albert Lippincott is a resident of Nestor, New Yorkmailman extraordinaire, aggressively cheerful, obsessively efficient. But Albert has a few things to hide: his unfortunate habit of reading other people's mail, a nervous breakdown, a disastrous marriage to a nurse, and a sexually ambiguous entanglement with his melodramatic sister. Now his supervisors are on to his letter-hoarding compulsion, and there's a throbbing pain under his right arm. Things are closing in on Albert, who will soon be forced to confront, once and for all, his life's failures. Funny and moving, driven by a wild, compulsive interior voice, Mailman is a unique creation, a deeply original American novel.
