SOURCE: "Creating Your Creators: The Protean Paul West Tackles His Toughest Inventions: Mom and Dad," in Chicago Tribune—Books, October 18, 1992, p. 5.

In the following review of Love's Mansion, Coates theorizes that West's portrayal of his parents' lives is in line with his fictionalization of other historical figures in such novels as Lord Byron's Doctor and The Rat Man of Paris.

Love's Mansion is either Paul West's consummate novel or his most atypical—if, come to think of it, a "typical" Paul West novel can be imagined. Prolific, protean in impersonation, gamy and yet uncannily tender in sensibility and subject matter, he relishes inhabiting "real" historical people we thought we knew, as well as many we didn't, as some of his titles indicate: Lord Byron's Doctor, The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg, The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper.

In last year's tour de force, Portable...