Review by Booklist Review
Bollen launches his first novel with a magnificent overture in which young dreamers who have come to New York City to fulfill their destiny climb onto rooftops to meet lightning-riven thunderstorms rolling in from their midwestern home ground. What follows is similarly heightened, poignant, and mysterious. Storm-watcher and actor Joseph fled Ohio and a grim, secret family legacy. Not even his new wife, Delphine (Del), a Greek immigrant anxious for a green card, knows that Joseph meets with a clandestine group of conspiracy theorists. Just as no one knows how much Joseph's desperate friend William relies on Quinn, an older gay man. Add a clinging and potentially dangerous conspiracy group member; Del's best friend, Madi, an Indian American entrepreneur; Madi's photographer brother, Raj, Del's former lover; a fatal accident; and murder; and Bollen's atmospheric tale of post-9/11 New York has more twists and toxicity than the venomous snakes Del cares for at the Bronx Zoo. Bollen's ambitious and provocative plot isn't altogether convincing, but his frantic characters are alluring, his writing ravishing, and his insights trenchant.--Seaman, Donn. Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bollen's debut tells the story of a loose network of 30-somethings languishing in New York in the years between 9/11 and the financial meltdown. Life begins to unravel for Joseph Guiteau, a handsome actor with a deadly family legacy, after his green card marriage to Delphine "Del" Kousavos, a beautiful Greek immigrant stagnating in a dead-end job at the Bronx Zoo. As Joseph's health begins to falter (part of his family curse), he seeks solace in the company of conspiracy theorists and grows close to an elderly woman whose husband may have been murdered by a corporate cabal. Meanwhile, Del tries to extinguish her feelings for a morose ex-boyfriend, Raj, but circumstances bring them closer. As Joseph and Del are driven inexorably apart, their friends William, a failed actor, and Madi, a ruthless corporate profiteer, are propelled together by a series of mysterious coincidences, resulting in a shocking catastrophe that will change each of their lives. While Bollen's characters are brimming with the verve and stamina of real people searching for meaning in a city beset by calamity, the intersecting story lines in this swollen, sometimes unwieldy epic feel alternately fated and forced. Yet the novel demonstrates the vigor and audacity of a formidable new voice. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This impressive first novel is so dense that it feels like several books in one. It tells the overlapping stories of five young adults living in New York City: Joseph, an actor with a tragic family history; his new wife, Del, who works at the zoo while seeking U.S. citizenship; Del's former lover Raj, a photographer who's afraid to leave his room; Raj's sister, Madi, who is exploiting her father's native India for commercial success; and William, an actor whose inability to find work leads him to increasingly desperate and dangerous measures. Set against a post-9/11 backdrop, the book is united by the theme of fate and whether we can evade its clutches. While this theme is intriguing and leads to some satisfying twists, the novel's greater appeal lies in the immensely detailed lives of the characters, especially in Del's love of snakes at a job made miserable by her boss and in William's sometimes humorous, sometimes horrifying downward spiral. VERDICT -Recommended for fans of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, another chronicle of imperfect New Yorkers.-Evelyn Beck, Piedmont Technical Coll., Greenwood, SC (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A quartet of isolated personalities drift the streets of post-9/11 New York in Bollen's debut literary novel. Joseph Giteau graduated high school in Cincinnati, immediately left his reclusive, conspiracy-obsessed mother and moved to New York. Delphine Kousavos left a tiny Greek island and entered Columbia University. Madi and Raj Singh left a fractured biracial Florida home and found success in the Big Apple. The four characters' stories intertwine in this postmodern tale, seemingly random and chaotic on the surface but layered with existential malaise and good intentions gone wrong. Joseph found success as an actor, mostly in commercials, and mostly because of his good looks. But Joseph believes, though he admits his fear to no one, that he will die this year, his 35th, of heart failure, as did his father and grandfathers. Del drifted into a job as a reptile curator at the Bronx Zoo, a profession she dislikes enough to persuade Joseph, her lover of 10 months, to marry her so that she might stay in the country without a work visa. Madi, Del's closest friend from college, is the most successful of the four, a vice-president of a company outsourcing jobs to India. Raj, a talented photographer and Del's former lover, has fallen into an unidentifiable depression. Circling the group is William Asternathy, also an actor. William's looks are fading, and his career has been derailed by drugs and the party scene sparked by "that fast live-wire current circulating through the city." Another narrative opens when Joseph meets Aleksandra Andrews, widow of a suicide, a man embroiled in utility-deregulation fraud. Told in third person, there is symbolism to be contemplated, internal dialogue to define character and flashbacks that make Joseph the most sympathetic of the four. Nevertheless, in this realistic tale of love and loss, love and ambivalence, angst and anger, death deliberate and accidental, there are no heroes. A dark character study rife with paradox and indirection.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
