Bibliotekos: July 2024

Long Day's Journey Into Night - Review by Timothy V. Dugan
Kevin Hughes on Free Verse
Poems of Witness by James K. Zimmerman
Creation - a poem by Gabriel Guerra
Meteor Shower by Anne Whitehouse - a Review
Tribute to Omer Hadžiselimović by MiloradPejić
Protest Series - David H. Rommereim

Protest Series - Thom Brucie

Protest Series - Sharon Scholl

Protest Series - 2 more from J.K. Zimmerman

Protest Series - Lauren Coe

Protest Series - Janyce Stefan-Cole

Protest Series - J.K. Zimmerman

Some Reading

This Human Trait: Thom Brucie's Story

Thom Brucie's Poems from Wood

Frank Russo and Human History

Poems of James K. Zimmerman

Refugees and Runes of War

Four Poems by Adin Ljuca

Andrea Vojtko: Short Story Writer

Evolution and Art - New Book

Review of Alexandra Glynn's Psalm Sonnets

Philosophical Novelist, Ed Gibney

Review of Alicia Ostriker by Nina Tassi

Standing Next to a Corpse

Review of Caroline Hagood by Nina Tassi

Review of Kevin Brown by Nina Tassi

Letter From a Poet

Tongariro by Milorad Pejić

O'Neill's Strange Interlude - Timothy Dugan

Disturbed Sleep, M. Kaat Toy

Poet James Tolan

More Poems by Milorad Pejić

Karl Geary, Author and Actor

Profile of Gary Guinn

Michigan - Jeff Vande Zande

Getting Inspired: Robert Bové

Poems by Milorad Pejić

The Empathy of Arthur Powers

Night Writer: Jeff Vande Zande

Turning Point

Cape Town

Faith and Doubt anthology

Review of South Brooklyn Exterminating, a novel by Ian Maloney

Ian S. Maloney, South Brooklyn Exterminating. 2024. Spuyten Duyvil. 296 pages. $22 U.S. paperback. 978-1-959556-90-9.

Reviewed by Todd Adams

Ian Maloney tells the story of a boy Jonah growing up with a driven, complex father in South Brooklyn Exterminating. The novel starts with the father awakening his seven-year-old son at three in the morning. They are headed out to spray a place for bugs in Brooklyn, and the exterminating business serves many purposes in this book. It provides most of the setting and much of the plot. It is also how the father instills the values—a code to live by—of honesty, hard work, and pride in a job well done in his son. Still, it is also a source of much-needed comic relief, for this is not a simple, idyllic story in which father and son live a charmed life together. The father smokes two packs of cigarettes a day and drinks too much. When the eighty-hour work weeks become too much for him to endure, he also takes too many pills. As a result, he has an epic, violent episode and ends up in a sanitorium for six months. How the father gradually wins back his son’s trust is one of the most affecting scenes in a book filled with such scenes.

Maloney avoids sentimentality by respecting Hemingway’s admonition that the greater the emotion, the less said. We see and hear the world through Jonah’s eyes and ears because of the first-person narration. We know what he feels and thinks moment-by-moment, but there are no lengthy ruminations on the meaning of life. There is no angst-filled soul-searching. After the violent episode, the two main characters don’t have a tearful reconciliation. They work together on fixing a boat with a hole in it instead, and this metaphoric activity takes the place of words between the father and the son. How to heal breaches is a vital part of the code the father is teaching the son to live by, too.

Some of these values may not be for everyone. The father owns a gun and is loathe to give it up even after his outburst. His son has to take the weapon away and hide it. The father never gives up cigarette smoking, but neither of his children smokes. He despises political correctness as an affront to the English language, but the most memorable example is his insistence on using the word “exterminate” instead of “pest control.” More problematic, he indulges in anti-immigrant rhetoric. However, his generous actions toward individuals who have moved to the United States from foreign countries undercuts it. Perhaps most troubling, he has a traditional view of marriage and the role of women. His wife is to be loved and respected—and stay home to raise the kids. Even near the end of his life, he still considers this decision the best one of his life, and his son does not disagree.

However, he is determined not to raise his children as he was raised. They don’t live in constant fear and pain as he did when growing up as the son of an alcoholic and abusive father. He abuses alcohol and drugs, but he—or their mother—keeps them from succumbing to the same evil. Most importantly, he gives both his daughter and his son the freedom and emotional support to be who they want to be, unlike himself, and they choose to be artists. His is not a dogmatic love full of unchanging rules and strictures but an open, growing one that imbues the novel with surprising warmth and depth.

Hemingway’s aphorism serves Maloney well as he navigates these dangerous shoals of emotion, but perhaps less so when it comes to Jonah’s decision to become a writer and write a memoir about his relationship with his father. That decision is obviously tied to his father’s love of literature and frustrated desire to teach it. They share books with each other. They even recite poetry to each other, and the novel ends with the son’s first draft of a lengthy description of his father. This ending has an emotional effect, but it may also leave the reader wondering what Jonah has learned from writing the book, if anything.

All quibbles aside, however, this is an impressive debut novel about a complicated father-son relationship that ends in love and mutual respect instead of the more familiar disaster. Told with verve and style, it is full of compassion, pity and comedy as the reader learns about a rarely described, often ignored profession. I look forward to reading Ian Maloney’s next novel.

- Todd Adams is retired lawyer who writes a blog about everything he did wrong writing his first novel and how he hopes to avoid doing in his second one.

Bibliotekos

Pages

Thursday, July 18, 2024

Review of South Brooklyn Exterminating, a novel by Ian Maloney

Total Pageviews