Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Here's what we know about the narrator of the 14 stories that make up Goebel's debut: he's a Catholic boy from Ohio who moved to East Texas. He has a dog named Jewely, loves a woman named Catherine, and has lost a brother named Carl. The stories are raw footage of life in clever, contemporary idiom in which thoughts and feelings spill out onto the page uncurated. Goebel is clearly a very talented writer, and his experiment in this collection is noble. We know his narrator misses his beloved brother, "with a laugh like Christmas was today," but we catch such disparate glimpses of the rest of his life-snatches of memories of his love affair with Catherine (in the story "Boot of the Boot"), strange stories involving an eagle's feather ("The Adventures of Eagle Feather"), or a fierce man with half a hand ("Apache")-that nothing else much adds up. Even if the sum of this character's parts is compelling, there is in the end only a snappy voice-over, not a whole being to know or love. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
If Kerouac were writing today, his work might look something like thisand despite the title, many of the stories are indeed ours, as they focus on love and loss, pain and yearning. The "stories" are not discrete fictional units as much as variations on different themes that recur as we move through the narrative. One theme is the narrator's love of Catherine, who's moved on both literally and figuratively, for she went to Paris and fell in love with a Spaniard, Manuelo. The narrator's love for her is both intense and desperate, and he's never quite gotten over her loss. Another leitmotif is the death of the narrator's older brother, Carl, an event clearly even more traumatic than the loss of Catherine. The narrator's agony over this death pervades many of the stories but especially "Before Carl Left." The central character in the novel, however, is the narrator himself. Having been jailed and gone to rehab, and having had bizarre episodes following his participation in a peyote ritual, the narrator seems lucky to be alive. Even his turn at wearing a shirt and tie and teaching freshman composition at a small college in eastern Texas doesn't domesticate him, as he lives close to the bone on a ranch he rents from Squeaky, a gay rodeo roper. In a final bit of ironic exuberance, the narrator urges us to "Find God. Find love, Find America" rather than read a bookespecially the one we're holding in our hands. This is a fierce, untamed, riotous bookand from the first page you'll know you're not reading Jane Austen. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
