The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists Review

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The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists ReviewI just finished TMWTBWF and I'm completely amazed. Norm twists reality in a very personal way and shows to his readers how much an inventive writer he can be. Melding noirish language, lots of references to pop culture ( golden age hollywood, Drive-in movies, Spagetthi Western and 50's and 60's culture in general etc ), strong literary metaphors ( some passages borders on prose poetry ) in stories that are at the same time disturbing, blackly humorours, poignant,stupendously entertaining and original.
Mr Partridge has a special knack to tackle famililar themes ( Frankenstein, Vampires, Werewolves ) and gives entirely new twists, he always takes his stories to such unexpected directions so that the reader never knows what expect from them.
Norman Partridge is a truly one-of-kind and a HELL OF A WRITER.
1 * Seeing Past the Corners
23 * Red Right Hand ======================== ***1/2
47 * Coyotes =============================== ***1/2
67 * Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu ========= *****
87 * The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists ==== ****1/2
99 * The Pack ============================== ***1/2
117 * Blood Money ========================== ****1/2
141 * Last Kiss ============================ ****
153 * Blackbirds =========================== -
167 * Wrong Turn =========================== ****
183 * Spyder =============================== ****1/2
199 * In Beauty, Like the Night ============ ***
219 * Minutes ============================== **
227 * Where the Woodbine Twineth =========== ****
235 * Mr. Fox ============================== *****
255 * The Hollow Man ======================= -
263 * Return of the Shroud =================
287 * Tombstone Moon ======================== ****
297 * The Mojave Two-Step =================== ****
311 * ¡Cuidado! ============================= ****
323 * Carne Muerta ========================== ***1/2
335 * Bucket of Blood ======================= ***1/2
353 * Undead Origami ========================
375 * Harvest ================================ ****1/2
385 * The Bars on Satan's Jailhouse ========== *****
417 * Bibliography
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The Agnostics (Michigan Literary Fiction Awards) Review

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The Agnostics (Michigan Literary Fiction Awards) ReviewThis is literary fiction at its best. Vividly drawn characters, brilliant description and detail, a gripping, moving story told with a discerning eye and an open heart. The worn fabric of a family's life is ripped to shreds, then pieced together in a crazy quilt that promises to be more durable and, oddly, more comfortable. Rawlings' writing is exquisite; she truly deserves the Michigan Literary Fiction Award she won for this shattering, humorous, hopeful and memorable novel.The Agnostics (Michigan Literary Fiction Awards) Overview

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The Red Garden Review

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The Red Garden ReviewThis story is pure Alice Hoffman magic. She begins the story in 1750 with the settlers who founded the town of Bearsville, MA (name changed to Blackwell in 1786). Every chapter moves the story to another time period concluding sometime in the 2000's. The book reads like a seamless book of short stories, each chapter informing and building on the previous. Hoffman has a gift for sharply focusing on the main character of each time period as she moves the story of this small mountain town along, revealing an inner truth.
Characters come to town, live, leave, die, wander, return but always carry the thread of the town with them. The characters are so beautifully written, it's hard to choose a favorite chapter/story. The two chapters I enjoyed most were "The Principles of Devotion", the story of a loyal dog living at the grave of his owner and the "Monster of Blackwell", a young man who separates himself from society and lives in the mountains outside Blackwell. These chapters are achingly beautiful.
The red garden refers to the founder's (Hallie Brady) garden where the soil is as red as blood and everything that grows in it is red. Perhaps a symbol of life and death; the connection we all have to nature and each other.
Hoffman doesn't go on and on with flowery prose; her writing is edited, beautiful and powerful. She always manages to capture the beauty of a moment and the setting of the story, infusing it with her understanding of humanity.
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The White Tiger: A Novel Review

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The White Tiger: A Novel ReviewIn his debut novel, Aravind Adiga takes on some hefty issues: the unhappy division of social classes into haves and have-nots, the cultural imperialism of the First World, the powder-kegged anger that seethes among the world's dispossessed, and entrapment. But his skills as an author protect the novel from becoming one of those horrible didactic stories in which characters and plot are little more than mouthpieces and vehicle for delivering Great Truths. The White Tiger entertains and gives pause for thought. This is a good combination.
The plot centers around Balram Halwai, a laborer born and raised in a small village utterly controlled by crooked and feudally powerful landlords. The village is located in 'the Darkness,' a particularly backward region of India. Balram is eventually taken to Delhi as a driver for one of the landlord's westernized sons, Ashok. It's in Delhi that Balram comes to the realization that there's a new caste system at work in both India and the world, and it has only two groups: those who are eaten, and those who eat, prey and predators. Balram decides he wants to be an eater, someone with a big belly, and the novel tracks the way in which this ambition plays out.
A key metaphor in the novel is the rooster coop. Balram recognizes that those who are eaten are trapped inside a small and closed cage--the rooster coop--that limits their opportunities. Even worse, they begin to internalize the limitations and indignities of the coop, so that after awhile they're unable to imagine they deserve any other world than the cramped one in which they exist. Balram's dream is to break free of his coop, to shed his feathers and become what for him is a symbol of individualism, power, and freedom: a white tiger. But as he discovers, white tigers have their own cages, too.
Of course, it's not simply the Balram's of the world caught in the rooster coop. Adiga's point seems to be that even the world's most privileged suffer from a cultural and class myopia that limits perspective and distorts self-understanding. The White Tiger is a good tonic with which to clear one's vision and spread one's wings.
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Billy Goat Hill Review

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Billy Goat Hill ReviewChildhood stays with us long after we've passed the age of innocence, and this tale of growing up too fast is a testament to the resilience of children and the power that making the right choices can bring to lives riddled with despair, fear, lies and uncertainty.
The story opens in 1958, and anyone who is 40-something years of age, will recognize the nostalgic antics we participated in as kids. But Billy Goat Hill isn't just a story about childhood and coming-of-age. It's a narrative about emotional and physical survival, the power and positive imprint a stranger can leave on a young life; and the rewards that a stubbornness to overcome can bring.
The Parker family is trying to recover from the death of an infant brother, and a mother's grief tends to distance her from her two living sons. Lucinda, as Wade refers to his mother, is a lost soul, and 8-year old Wade assigns himself the responsibility to care for his foundering family.
Earl, the Parker brothers' father, is mostly missing; a carefree alcoholic who can't seem to connect with his role as a father. Wade wonders how life might be different if Duke Snider, the famous player for the Dodgers, were his father, instead. Wade weighs most of his major life decisions as a child against what Duke might think, say or do, and it's a running theme throughout the book.
But Wade Parker's most urgent dilemma at 8-years-old is completing a dare to ride a cardboard sled down the infamous Billy Goat Hill on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It's during his early morning escapade, which involves sneaking out of the house with his six-year-old brother, Luke, that the Parker brothers first meet a man and woman who will forever influence their young lives.
Convinced they will be killed for witnessing what looks like a motorcycle gang confrontation, the young Parkers instead become fascinated with a dynamic couple they first know as Scar and Miss Cherry, both of whom are police officers and who are in on a prank to initiate a rookie officer.
From that moment, the Parker boys form a lifelong bond with Scar, aka Sergeant, and Miss Cherry.
At times, the Sergeant and/or Miss Cherry are absent from the continuing lives of the Parker boys; and the incidents that separate the foursome are such that tend to happen in life, but still birth the question of "why."
Also running throughout the story line is a thread of Christianity, which gets picked up off and on through dilemmas and the people who come into a life. Like a needle slipping in and out of fabric, it nicely ties the story together and brings all the pieces together like a well-made quilt.
This is not intended as a touchy-feely feel-good book; but it is a well-above-average, satisfying read that leaves a good feeling behind anyway.
Morris writes with a lyrical voice and uses vivid, innovating descriptions that beg to be read aloud. Morris was born and raised in Southern California, a background that brings a richness to the setting for Billy Goat Hill.
Told in first person from Wade's point of view, Billy Goat Hill spans the defining years of childhood and early adulthood, throws in some life events in the middle and ends with Wade at 40 years old and coming into his fullness as a man of God.
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Moondogs: A Novel Review

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Moondogs: A Novel ReviewSatire, drama, comedy, fantasy, political commentary? I don't know! I just know I enjoyed spending this time in Manila with these people! I got to see a little of the life of an embassy worker, a soldier, a revolutionary, an action hero, an actor, and, of course, a witch or two. It's always nice to throw in a couple of bumbling criminals also. My children are all adults now, so I also especially enjoyed seeing a son come to terms with the reality of his father, rather than that fantasy we often grow up believing in. It's always fun to see adult children realize that both they and their parents are human! Additionally, I always enjoy a peek into an American expat community. I will definitely be watching for this new author's next book.Moondogs: A Novel Overview

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The Alice Stories (Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction) Review

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The Alice Stories (Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction) ReviewWinner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, The Alice Stories is an original novel by Jesse Lee Kercheval (Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison) that observes the story of a girl raised in Florida who ends up as a woman living in Wisconsin. She, her husband, and her daughter experience the richness of family; the tolls of pain and loss; and the importance of friends to help one through the roughest parts of life. A thoughtful, community-driven narrative emphasizing the importance of connections and emotional outlook, highly recommended.
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Olive Kitteridge: Fiction Review

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Olive Kitteridge: Fiction ReviewI am not normally a fan of short stories. While I appreciate the technical abilities of the short story writer, I find "shortness" troublesome. Generally, the longer a book is, the more appealing. Consequently, I was initially leery of the descriptions of Elizabeth Strout's newest novel, "Olive Kitteridge," which calls itself "a novel in stories."
All of the stories in this book occur in the town of Crosby, Maine. At the center of many of the book's stories is the person, Olive Kitteridge, a retired teacher. In the stories that don't feature Olive, her name may appear only once in an effort to tie it to the larger work. That the stories center on one town, and a limited number of that town's inhabitants, who also reappear from time to time, I did not encounter my usual problems with short stories. This book gently reminded me of what is best about short-stories: a brief slice of a life, a snapshot that tells a complete-enough story. In having all these stories bound together, one feels a bit like the proverbial "fly on the wall"; a fly who may spend most of, but certainly not all, it's time in one particularly interesting home (Olive's).
I especially enjoyed reading about Olive in her post-retirement years, the ways in which she deals with other people and herself. In many ways, I can identify with Olive, having doled out bits of malice in angering situations; or having been soft and tender-hearted during others. Like Olive, I too have been both fool and sage.
I really enjoyed "Olive Kitteridge." Olive is a complex person vacillating between viciousness and compassion. In the way all people are puzzles, so is Olive. In one story she does something deplorable, in another she potentially saves a life. People can never be fully known, merely experienced in bits and pieces, from which a general portrait may be formed. This book is a testament to the mystery that is humanity: why we do what we do, what motivates us, how even self-knowledge is warped and lacking, and how ultimately, all people are fundamentally incapable of seeing themselves as a whole. Olive also embodies hope: one is never too old for surprises.
Many of the "stories" in "Olive Kitteridge" are deeply profound and thought provoking. I will not be at all surprised when this book does very well. It's structure is unusual; it's message is penetrating and accessible and universal. Olive causes me to think of the many complex, and at times unlikeable, people in my own life in a different way. Strout is a master of revealing the many onion-like layers of interpersonal relationships. Halfway through "Olive Kitteridge" I went out and bought two of her other books. I am also tentatively considering reading some other short-story collections by authors whose novels I've loved.
Like any great book, "Olive Kitteridge" slightly shifts the way in which I look at the world and other people, and perhaps most importantly, myself.Olive Kitteridge: Fiction Overview

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Expiration Date Review

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Expiration Date ReviewI love this book! It's a meditation on death, without being at all morbid or depressing, and at the same time a fun, fast moving story about an adventurous 85-year-old woman who is living life to the hilt and her middle-aged daughter who is preoccupied with a dream that foretold the date, which is almost upon her, of her death. Many contemporary novels dealing with death are constructed such that the mother/father is dying and the caretaking (or estranged) daughter/son is making amends and navigating the final good-bye. The expectation is that a story about death will have a character who is actually dying, but not so here. Instead, we have two very much alive people, both of whom love and are loved, seized by the random thoughts about death we all have at one time or another. It's a brave author who picks up this subject in a cultural context that shies away from looking at death, except as a tragedy and often sentimentally. Jaffe pulls it off.
I don't agree with the reviewer who felt that the book did not explore relations among the three generations of women fully enough. That was not the author's purpose. From the first powerful scene in the heavenly court, the subject matter of death is broadcast in big lights, and there is no set up for this to be an inter-generational story, which would have been too much and have distracted from the single focus Jaffe clearly intended to maintain. Her prose is sprightly, the peregrinations of her characters' consciousnesses totally engaging, the narrative full of surprises--a gem of a book tightly wrought, but with a depth of feeling that unfurls to a satisfying and uplifting ending.Expiration Date Overview

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Letting Loose the Hounds: Stories Review

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Letting Loose the Hounds: Stories ReviewThe best book of short stories I have ever read. If you like Thom Jones, Denis Johnson or T.C. Boyle, then give this book a shot.Letting Loose the Hounds: Stories Overview

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A Confederacy Of Dunces Review

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A Confederacy Of Dunces ReviewThis is an incredibly funny and intelligent book. I initially borrowed it from the library, but ended up buying copies for friends. Next, I will have to get one for myself. It is a read you will want to read again and again. A Pulitzer Prize winner.A Confederacy Of Dunces Overview

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All Aunt Hagar's Children Review

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All Aunt Hagar's Children Review
Some things are well worth waiting for and Edward P. Jonses's follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize winning debut novel "The Known World" (2003) is most assuredly one of them. Once again he uses short story formats to illuminate and make memorable his characters, ordinary people, really, but to the reader they are unforgettable. This author's evocation of black life in America is incomparable.
The 14 stories that comprise "All Aunt Hagar's Children" are set in Washington, the city where Jones was raised and now lives. He opens with "In The Blink of God's Eye," the story of Ruth and Aubrey, a young couple in their late teens and recently married. Ruth does not always rest well in "godforsaken Washington" while Aubrey "always slept the sleep of a man not long out of boyhood." One night when Ruth was wakeful she went out in back where she found a baby tied in a bundle hanging from a tree limb. Thus, she thought Washington was "a city where they hung babies in night trees."
As is his wont Jones treats readers to the earlier lives of his characters, rendering them all the more accessible and sympathetic. This is especially true in "Resurrecting Methuselah" in which we meet Anita Channing who sits by the bedside of Bethany, her ill daughter. She sits in a wooden chair built a century and a half ago by a former slave. Anita's husband, Percival, is serving in Okinawa, where he spends much time with a prostitute, Sara Lee. When Percival discovers he has breast cancer he calls Anita and asks her to come to him. She reaches Honolulu, a stopover in her flight, where she has an opportunity to look back on her childhood and wonder what the future holds for herself and her child.
"All Aunt Hagar's Children" concludes with "Tapestry," another story of a young couple, Anne and George, marrying and leaving their rural roots behind. George is a porter on a train, the train that carries them to Washington. As the train slows close to its destination Anne whispers, Mama, Papa, "I'm a long way from home."
For this reader that was the gist of all of these marvelous stories, people seeking a better life a long way from home.
Jones is such an incredibly gifted writer, his prose is succinct, true, impeccably crafted. Reading his work is not only a pleasure but a privilege as well.
- Gail CookeAll Aunt Hagar's Children Overview

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The Good Psychologist: A Novel Review

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The Good Psychologist: A Novel ReviewTHE GOOD PSYCHOLOGIST is the debut novel from Noam Shpancer and shows no signs of being a first novel. This book is written with intelligence, insight, passion and a great sense of humanity. The book is being described as a suspense novel and this can be very misleading. It is in no way a thriller or mere suspense novel. If someone picks it up to read expecting this they will be in for a shock. I certainly hope the word gets spread what this novel really is for it will then attract a whole difference audience who will appreciate this fine work.
This novel is a deep character study. The entire novel is told through the perspective of the main character who is known as only the unnamed psychologist. He lives his life with his practice as well as teaching a night class. As we get to know the good doctor his exlover, also his best friend, announces she is moving. He gets a new and intriguing patient who is a stripper. And one of his students proves to be a troubled case. The story is told through lectures, therapy sessions and pure thoughts as we are in the mind of the psychologist throughout. The drama and mystery that may exist is what one would get by being fully in the thought process of any person. Our psychologist is intelligent, caring and fully human. He reflects on his own imperfections and most importantly tries to be the best he can be while living life. This is a very human novel and was a very daring attempt by the author. For any author such a premise would be either a hit or miss. And here it is a true hit. The way the story brings therapy sessions, lectures and thoughts together merely brings us that much closer into the mind of the psychologist.
The book is in no way meant to be a high praise of the profession or a dig at it either. Our psychologist takes his job seriously and tries sincerely to help others. But the most important part of him is his humanity. What the novel shows is that all people are very complex and that there is much more to each of us deep inside. The journey we go on with the psychologist will have the reader very reflective on their own passions, desires actions and pursuits of life. Getting to know this character is time well spent and this novel is a hugely succesful debut from Noam Shpancer. This is a very intelligent piece of literature that I highly recommend.The Good Psychologist: A Novel Overview

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The Good and the Ghastly: A Novel Review

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The Good and the Ghastly: A Novel ReviewUsually when someone contacts me via email about reading their book, they give me a description of it and I say sure, send it, or no that's not for me. And usually, if the description includes a phrase like "gangster noir epic set a thousand years into the future." I'll pass because, well, that's just not for me, in most cases. Usually, the name on the book is not James Boice. I said it once, when I reviewed NoVA, and I'll repeat it here: I don't know why this guy doesn't get more attention.
The Good and the Ghastly is as described in that email. Set in 3348, after the war and the nuclear destruction, after 1000 years of crawling back to a time that reflects our own. Bits of ancient history seep through the years - the great leaders and artists who stand tall throughout the centuries - Alexander the Great, Bob Dylan, Sarah Palin. Thank god Visa is there to hold everything together.
Junior Alvarez grows up in the fractured gangland of Visa NoVA with a God complex, a bad temper, and a will to act violently and decisively against his foes. In a massive teenage gangfight, he beats a boy to death, and the boy's mother starts a never-ending campaign against Junior - first through legal means, and the via a systematic vigilante attack on the gang system.
Junior is the real story here, though. He rises from an anger-fueled street thug, unwelcome (frustratingly so for JR) through the front door of the highest establishments, to a meticulously organized lieutenant masquerading as a community benefactor, to mob boss, sometimes through deception and sometimes through violence. It's a rise familiar to the modern reader or filmgoer - think The Departed, or Heat, or Billy Bathgate with something of a steampunk sensiblity.
Junior is a great character. He's despicable from a young age, seducing minors and busting heads. He believes he is destined for greatness and the shame he feels at his back-door status is palpable and the motivation for the swath of violence he unleashes.
Whereas NoVA was reserved and pointed, viewing suburbia from multiple angles, The Good and the Ghastly is a detached view of a killer, with all his charms and warts, building an empire and chased Javert-like by feds and vigilantes.
James Boice is as good as ever here. He doesn't let the dystopian satire get in the way of the story, relieving me of one of my personal annoyances. He's gritty and reflective, twistedly funny, and his sentences are as sharp as ever. A fearless, unrepentant book of a fearsome future - The Good and the Ghastly will be released by Scribner on 6/14/11.
more reviews at threeguysonebook.comThe Good and the Ghastly: A Novel Overview

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Bitter End Review

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Bitter End ReviewI picked up Bitter End with no clue about it's theme or story, I just knew that I loved Jennifer Brown's previous novel Hate List so much that this one had to be good. It did not disappoint. Bitter End is the tale of a young girl named Alex who falls in love with Cole, the new boy at school. The story of their relationship is filled with violence, guilt, despair and even love. It's a powerful novel that I wish I could make every young girl read before they start dating. There are valuable lessons to be learned here as the author takes an almost textbook look at the characteristics of an abusive relationship.
Alex is a well rounded character, and even though she comes from a troubled family, the author has taken great pains to establish her as a fairly typical teen. Her two best friends play an important role in the story, and serve to point out that even though Alex has a support system in her life, she still falls into some pretty common traps. Any teen reader will easily be able to see a bit of themselves in these characters. It will perhaps make them uncomfortable as it will cause many to re-think their attitudes of "this could never happen to me".
If I have any complaint about this novel, it's that it gets off to a rather slow start as the author works to establish her characters. It took me a while to get to know Alex, and I really didn't understand some of her feelings concerning her mom and dad until pretty much the end of the book.
In sum, this is an important story that succeeds in dealing with the issue of domestic violence in a way that places it firmly in a realistic teen universe. Alex is a great character, and her struggles are heartbreaking and honest. The story is never heavy handed simply because of Alex's strong, authentic narrative voice. We get a ringside seat here to witness a catastrophic relationship and Brown lets us follow it unflinchingly to the bitter end. Recommended.
Note: A short question and answer section about domestic abuse plus information about how to get help if you are being abused are included at the end of this book.Bitter End Overview

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Busy Monsters: A Novel Review

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Busy Monsters: A Novel ReviewOf the 9 hysterically positive 5 star reviews, 7 are by first time reviewers. I don't know if that means anything, but it makes me suspicious. I wonder if this book had an editor. The author, or his character, seems to think that cerebellum means "brain," gluteus means "buttock," and that a squid is a fish. Trying too hard to be clever. Giraldi is undoubtedly talented and I will probably give his next a chance.
For language used with nimbleness and flair by another first time novelist, I recommend Benjamin Hale's The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore.Busy Monsters: A Novel Overview

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Dark Souls: A Novel Review

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Dark Souls: A Novel ReviewA good friend at a local indie heard me raving over Paula Morris' Ruined. When the ARC for Dark Souls came in she saved it for me and surprised me with it last a short time ago and I could not resist starting it as soon as I was able. I am really not a ghost story fan. But, I really love Paula Morris' writing. She really tells a good story. I will start with the cover. It is haunting but, I really like it. The cobblestone streets and the whole 'Old England' appeal to it just draw me in and I imagine there really is a street that looks like this in York.
We have a set of new characters in Dark Souls. I have to admit I was hoping there was more New Orleans in this one. But, one of the things that this author does so well is set a scene. She does an excellent job of helping you feel as if you are actually seeing the buildings, streets and people yourself. She does not overdo it by inundating us with what someone is wearing or what the furniture looks like. She gives us what is pivotal to the story. She just has a way of making you see the picture in your head if you are visual reader like me.
In Dark Souls a family tragedy has turned the Tennant family's world upside down. They decide to take advantage of both parents having a chance to do some visiting work in York, England, and make it a family vacation. Miranda, the curious intelligent protagonist of the story, has come to England with what might be seen as a gift or a curse. As she works her way through it alone she becomes engulfed in a mystery that has its basis in the early 1800's and is one of the pivotal moments in York, England's history. The story is well written and supports my initial reaction to Paula Morris' writing skills and I look forward to where she takes us to visit next.
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The Long-Shining Waters Review

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The Long-Shining Waters ReviewLong Shining Waters is a lyric but dark book. Sosin is a beautiful writer, a poet really, and her book is worth reading if simply to savor her use of language.Sosin's Lake Superior is a dangerous neighbor, driving two of her main characters to the edge of sanity and beyond. The Ojibwa woman's story is powerful and stays with me, as does that of the fisherman's wife. The least memorable, save that it takes place near Schroeder where I live A View of the Lake, is that of the bar owner. There is a fourth and very strange voice in the book and one is never quite certain who or what it is. It varies at times so that just when you think you know where it comes from, it changes voice.The Long-Shining Waters Overview

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To Be Sung Underwater: A Novel Review

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To Be Sung Underwater: A Novel ReviewThis novel by Tom McNeal is about Judith, a young woman who, when her parents divorce, moves from Vermont to a small college town in Nebraska where her father is a professor. It is also about Willy, a young man she "abandoned, and yet never quite left behind."
The story is about two worlds: the surface and what lies beneath the surface; the present and the past; the world Judith finds herself in when she reaches a mid-life crisis, and the world she longs for.
Judith lives in Los Angeles with her husband of twenty years. She edits movies. The turning point or "swerve" in her life begins when her husband buys a new bedroom set for their daughter Camille and places the old set out by the pool. To Judy, this bedroom set is not just any furniture. It is a birds-eye maple bedroom set that has family history and a special significance to her.
Judith rents a storage unit and secretly reconstructs it to look like the room she had when she was a teen. She escapes her reality of editing movies and the façade of her marriage by thinking back to the simple joys of her high school years. She finds herself drawn to the storage unit, again and again losing track of all time while she naps peacefully on her birds-eye maple bed.
We quickly realize that Judith's life in Los Angeles is superficial. Her musings about the high plains of Nebraska have the depth of simplicity. Her memories reveal who Judith really is beneath the surface. Those memories involve Willy, a young carpenter who ushered her into womanhood on the birds-eye maple bed and helped her appreciate the beauty of a sunset and his dream of a little acreage where he would one day create a small lake.
Judith's transformation into an alternate world is so complete that she creates a new identity and hires a detective to find three friends from her past. Of course, one of them is Willy, the boy she left in Nebraska.
Tom McNeal, author of award winning "Goodnight, Nebraska," spent part of every summer in Nebraska, at a farm where his mother was raised. To those of us familiar with the area, we recognize Rufus Sage as Chadron and are pleasantly startled to read references to Hemingford, Highway 385, Herman the Germans and other local places. I was not surprised, however, to realize that what matters most happens in small communities in America's heartland, and not on either coast.
I wondered about the title of the book, but then I thought about when I was a kid, taking a bath, and I let my head rest on the bottom of the tub, ears completely submerged, nose above waterline. I remember singing and listening to how different the tune sounded underwater. I remember how the words and music were clear and pure and limited to the voice inside my own head. Those two worlds-- life on the surface and life beneath the surface--still mesmerize me and those same worlds are captured eloquently and reflectively by Tom McNeal.
Immerse yourself. This book is "to be sung underwater."To Be Sung Underwater: A Novel Overview

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Ten Thousand Saints: A Novel Review

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Ten Thousand Saints: A Novel ReviewThe new novel TEN THOUSAND SAINTS is certainly interesting and to me at least quite original. The book begins on New Year's Eve 1987 in fictional college town Lintonburg,VT (um if you notice Lintonburg contains the exact same letters as Burlington the home of the University of Vermont and the fictional and real cities have many similarities). Two young teenagers, Teddy and Jude, are out partying with their new friend Eliza from Manhattan and tragically Teddy is found dead the next morning after among other things huffing Freon and snorting cocaine. Both Jude and Eliza feel very guilty because Jude pressed the Freon on him and Eliza supplied the cocaine. Actually Eliza offered Teddy more than cocaine that night and she soon discovers she is pregnant from her one time encounter with the now deceased teenager. Eliza, Jude and Teddy's older half brother Johnny form a family of sorts who hope to raise Teddy's baby.
Adults are as important to the story as the teenagers and the effects of parents' actions on their children is a major theme of the book. Jude and his sister Prudence's divorced parents both make their living from marijuana as their dad Les is a prosperous grower and dealer while their artist mother Harriet, perhaps the most stable parent in the novel, makes her living from blowing glass bongs and pipes. Eliza's mom who at the beginning of the story is also Les's girlfriend is a self absorbed ballerina while Teddy and Johnny's mom is an aging hippie known for disappearing when ever things get uncomfortable. Johnny's dad is a prison inmate and Teddy's dad is an unknown man of Asian Indian descent who turns up toward the end of the book and is not what this reader at least expected.
The teenagers turn to Straight Edge music with the accompanying austere lifestyle strongly influenced by Hare Krishna beliefs. It is implied that this is a reaction against their parents' hedonistic ways. Johnny who is a musician and tattoo artist living in the Tompkins Square Park area of Manhattan's alphabet city marries Eliza in hopes of giving his dead brother's baby a chance to stay under his influence even though he has no romantic interest in women. Johnny seems to epitomize the Straight Edge lifestyle and is known as Mr. Clean because of his shaved head and vegan habits.
TEN THOUSAND SAINTS is a novel well worth reading. AIDS, homelessness, gentrification, parenthood, adoption, and drug use are among the many topics incorporated in the book. The author does a great job of bringing the late 1980's in the East Village to detailed life and the choices of the kids and parents in the book will linger in the reader's memory.And the book ends with a very appropriate and effective postscript from 2006 on the last night the famed punk venue CBGB's was open.
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