“That Amorphous Me”: A review of Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s A Stranger Comes to Town by Erika Nichols-Frazer

A Stranger Comes to Town
by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
EastOver Press
208 pp.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s latest novel, A Stranger Comes to Town from EastOver Press, opens with the following epigraph from Leo Tolstoy: “All great literature is one of two stories: a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” Schwartz’s novel asks, what if the stranger is yourself?

In this quiet, introspective novel, protagonist Joe Marzino is a thirty-five-year-old actor, husband, and father—or so he’s told—who experiences long-term memory loss as a result of a traumatic collision with a bicyclist in New York City. Following the accident, he recalls nothing from his personal life—not even his name, wife, or children. He is forced to relearn himself and rebuild his identity in the absence of personal history. As an actor on a popular TV crime drama, his most challenging role becomes portraying himself.

“The world that I had forgotten was indeed a frightening place,” Schwartz writes. She invites readers to consider, who are we if not our memories, our experiences, and the people we surround ourselves with? What makes an identity? “A lot of people live without knowing much about the truth of their lives,” Marzino’s mother says.

Marzino is informed of his past by his loved ones as if learning a stranger’s story. He (re)discovers his own secrets and shameful past, things he has done that he is not proud of, as if these transgressions were performed by someone else. Can he be held accountable for mistakes he doesn’t even remember? How can he atone for sins missing from his history? Schwartz explores themes of guilt, truth, and self-discovery in this slim novel that combines masterful dialogue with Marzino’s profound inner monologue, a constant stream of his myriad questions and persistent self-doubt. “I didn’t feel like the kind of guy I was turning out to be,” he says.

“…whoever I have become, that amorphous me taking shape like a figure emerging from a fog, still barely visible,” Marzino describes himself and his predicament. But is that not all of us, attempting to create a narrative of self and maintain it in its shifting forms, the “amorphous me?” Who doesn’t feel at times like they’re faking it, doing their best to present themselves as if they are confident in their identity, playing an actor in the role of themselves? Do we not all reinvent ourselves throughout our lives, or at least try to? Rewrite our own histories? How do we become someone new?

At the Bennington Writing Seminars in Bennington, Vermont, where Schwartz taught fiction for many years, I once heard her say that she got in the head of characters with experiences and identities vastly different from her own by simply putting herself in their shoes and imagining what that would be like. She has done so impressively in this novel, prompting the reader to ask, who would I be if I lost myself? The novel relies less on plot than on contemplation and big questions of identity and sense of self. It asks us if, like Schwartz does as an author, we can put ourselves in our own shoes and imagine what it must be to be whatever makes us us.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz has published thirty books, including her 1980 debut novel, Rough Strife, which was nominated for a National Book Award, along with poetry, short stories, essays, a memoir, and even a children’s book. I had the good fortune of having her as a professor at the Bennington Writing Seminars several years ago and admired her astute, no-nonsense feedback, as well as her compassion and incredible patience with me as I struggled through a difficult personal time when I could barely show up to the page. Our written correspondence—by snail mail!—sustained me as the rest of my life spun out of control, as lives sometimes do. I credit Lynne with keeping me on track and inspiring me to cling to writing and literature like a life raft and eventually go on to graduate with my MFA. She shared her love of classic literature and assigned me to read Gertrude Stein, Vladimir Nabokov, John Edwards Williams’ Stoner, among many others. These influences are present and alive in her writing.

Along with her husband, Schwartz is co-director of Calliope Author Readings, which allows the pair to share original recordings of readings from many great writers over the past 50+ years. She used to share these recordings (I recall one of Philip Roth in particular), which were recorded at salon-style gatherings in their home, at the Bennington Writing Seminars’ residencies, deepening the community’s experience of engaging in meaningful literature and literary history.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz continues this rich literary history with her new novel, A Stranger Comes to Town, at once mysterious and profound, understated yet moving, which asks questions that will leave readers thinking about their own identities, memories, and sense of self.

Erika Nichols-Frazer is the author of the memoir, Feed Me: A Story of Food, Love and Mental Illness (an excerpt of which was published in MicroLit Almanac) as well as the poetry collection, Staring Too Closely. Her poetry chapbook, Can you see her, the moon? from Finishing Line Press and her short story collection, No One Will Ever Hear You from Rootstock Publishing are forthcoming in 2026. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and has published more than thirty short stories, essays, and poems in literary journals such as River Teeth's Beautiful Things, Gone Lawn, Bloodroot Literary Journal and others. She works at Vermont State University and lives in central Vermont.