A piquant and fun romp that recounts the misadventures of a beer drinker who proves to be as insightful as he is amusing.
A 20-something Missouri man with a penchant for swilling beer on his lounger experiences an epiphany that turns his life around in this fictionalized memoir.
Selraybob peaks when he plays left tackle for the Waketon champion high school football team. Years later, his wife, Joalene, reads him the riot act, walks out the door, and leaves him sitting in his lounger drinking three quarts of beer a day, reminiscing about those glory high school days. Does he indulge in self-pity as he watches her stride away? Of course not. Instead, Sel (as his friends call him) sees two clocks that differ in time by seven minutes, and this observation becomes the inspiration that drives him from his lounger to reclaim his broken life (“What I decided was this: all we’ve been doing when we tell time, since we started telling time, is counting things. That’s it. We’ve been counting”). That may not seem like much, but to Sel this reflection leads him to obsessively read up on time and to formulate his own intriguing theory, which comprises an Everyman’s argument against the ideas of Einstein and Stephen Hawking and all the sophisticated and complex concepts of modern physics. “Time is a Count,” Sel surmises. In this funny, wise, and poignant account, the author, also named Selraybob (There Is No Now, 2011), deftly describes the protagonist’s bracing journey and captivating cohorts. With the help of his best buddy, Herm, Sel fixes up his old, beloved, broken-down car (“She was still beautiful. Sleek and red. A Corvair. But not just any Corvair….This was a 1964 Monza Convertible. Rear engine. Long, straight lines. Not curvy but not boxy. Lean. And misunderstood. She was called dangerous back in the day”). He wants to hot-rod around town and keep an eye on Joalene; he thinks she is having an affair with Reggie, Herm’s brother, the star quarterback Sel protected back in his football days. As Sel embarks on rollicking escapades while skillfully unraveling the mystery of time, Herm’s beautiful wife gives him some much-needed backup. Written in a distinctive, plain style that calls to mind Mark Twain, this book should touch and entertain readers with its self-deprecating humor and deep perceptions that penetrate to the root of the Midwest American male character.
A piquant and fun romp that recounts the misadventures of a beer drinker who proves to be as insightful as he is amusing.Pub Date: July 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9846156-6-7
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Cur Dog Press
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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