PARADISE DOGS

A nostalgic Floridian with an unsound mind fumbles his way through a series of misadventures and reconciliations. 

Georgia novelist Martin (Days of the Endless Corvette, 2007) follows up his sweetly Southern debut with another meandering portrait of a loser who can’t be convinced that he’s lost. This latest comedy introduces protagonist Adam Newman, a 47-year-old divorcée whose best days lay far behind him. He pines for his ex, Evelyn, with whom he had once run a celebrated hot dog stand, and craves the approval of his son Addison, an obituary writer with dreams of grandeur of his own. Unfortunately for him, Adam is almost chronically ill at ease with his own persona, the drunken buffoon who invariably screws things up. “Adam only felt comfortable pretending to be someone he was not: Adam Newman, CPA, or Adam Newman, DDS; around the people he loved, plain Adam Newman found himself behind an invisible wall that no amount of cheer or goodwill allowed him to break through,” Martin writes. Conversely, Adam is an accidental con artist extraordinaire, perhaps not purposefully misleading others, but allowing them their misimpressions as he takes on different roles, ranging from a diamond dealer to a priest. Through the course of his arc, set in the mid-1960s, Adam gets arrested, is committed to a psychiatric ward, attends a wedding and has a hilarious confrontation with the man most responsible for the carnival atmosphere of modern Florida, Walt Disney. It’s an ironic take on an optimistic time in American history, but as Martin takes pleasure in pointing out, sometimes things just don’t turn out OK. “There are moments upon which, even if one is unaware, the entire universe pivots: what is heading up turns down, good becomes bad, sweet goes sour—in short, everything gets bungled,” he writes.

Martin has a gift for shepherding his amiable protagonist through truly absurd situations, but patience for the pinballing plot largely depends on affection for the disingenuous Adam.