Lucas Stoffel

The Third Person Book Review: Demetris Papadimitropoulos - On grief, attention, and the unfinished self in Luke Stoffel’s "The Third Person" - A lone figure stands inside an unfinished wooden sanctuary open to sea light – a visual echo of “The Third Person,” where the self is not repaired so much as quietly held, still under construction, and finally learning the difference between rescue and witness. Warboy loves by fixing things. That is the buried motor of Luke Stoffel’s

The Third Person is a memoir written entirely in third person. Yes, that sounds like a contradiction. It follows a version of me after a devastating breakup with the person I call Warboy, the end of a fifteen-year relationship that left me suspended somewhere between grief and motion. I rent out my New York apartment, lose my job, go home to Iowa for Christmas, and eventually do the thing heartbroken people do when standing still becomes unbearable: I leave. Vietnam. Thailand