A tale with some well-written passages, but its narrator’s misogyny and narcissism will appeal only to like-minded readers.
In Bukowski’s debut novel, an English teacher weaves his hopes about a young Ukrainian woman he’s met online with tales of tending to his cats and going to strip clubs.
When Frank Gelaitis, 29, a ninth-grade English teacher in Broken Hill, Ohio, sees a photo of Annie, 19, in his “Russian Romance” catalog, he’s completely smitten and can’t help writing to her. American women, he thinks, conduct dates like job interviews and they unaccountably prefer insensitive, unintelligent, or even criminally insane boyfriends to him. He lives in a trailer park and can’t move out because, without him, the park’s feral cats would starve. Frank sees himself as a modern-day St. Francis who believes in love and compassion; at the same time, he harshly judges most people and their pursuits, such as suntanning (“Am I the only one who understands [poet Robinson] Jeffers when he writes, ‘Be Angry at the Sun’?”). Especially disturbing to Frank is the “absurdist tragedy” of society’s expectations for men, whose only reward for conforming, he believes, is “to come home to what passes for ‘average’ American women these days: overweight, bitchy, demanding, and badly-aging.” (Frank describes his own body as “only average at best.”) Three or four times a week, he seeks escape in strip clubs. Some quasi-romantic successes, such as a young girl’s crush on him, boost his confidence, and as he prepares to visit Annie in the Ukraine, he hopes for the best. The pseudonymous Bukowski offers a complex portrait of his protagonist and gives him some genuinely admirable qualities, such as how he lovingly cares for felines. The author can turn a vivid phrase, as when he describes how Kiev’s “winding cobblestone roads [lead] past colorful little houses that must have sprung up like mushrooms in a book of fairy tales written by God’s youngest daughter.” But Frank’s ugly attitude toward women is pervasive, and he seems narcissistic to the point of delusion. The protagonist’s description of the aforementioned 13-year-old girl as a “smoldering Lolita” is also highly off-putting.
A tale with some well-written passages, but its narrator’s misogyny and narcissism will appeal only to like-minded readers.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5349-8347-2
Page Count: 314
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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