Blue Paradise (New Writers' Series)

Rating:
Summary: this writer is the real thing
Review: I found myself overlooking the rough edges in this book and simply enjoying experience of being held in the hands of a true storyteller. I am not a boxer and don't frequent Hell's Kitchen but after ten pages I was completely invested in the lives of the characters. The author's compassion and heart come through in every scene. Buy this book and enjoy it!

Rating:
Summary: A fresh voice on a familiar theme
Review: I just can't resist checking out fresh young voices whose books deal with New York City sleaze and whose main characters are named Nick.

Nick is a young bartender in a working class bar in the west 40's. He is a boxer who is training for his big fight. Naturally, the local mob figures want him to throw the fight. His best friend, Jimmy, is a loser who patronizes massage and porn parlors, drinks too much, and always is trying schemes that don't work. The author uses simple words but yet gets into the heart and soul of the characters. I felt their reality as they moved about in their world, breathed the dust on the West Side Highway, smelled the beer in the bar, felt the mugginess of the summer heat wave. More characterization than story, but I still couldn't stop reading. A good first novel and an author to watch. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: A compelling, strong story
Review: In Blue Paradise, Matt Bloom creates a vivid landscape of stragglers and ragged souls - but you could never call them losers, for one of Bloom's gifts as a writer is that his characters live within the real world, where hope is always a choice, for those who reach for it.

This novel is full of great characters populating a world the reader can see, hear and almost touch. It's a difficult, painful world - one might even say it's sordid in many ways, but I have to say that the author's sympathy and understanding,not to be confused with sentimentality, for his characters brings a strong sense of realism and complexity to this work.

Of course, it's fundamentally a great story, with a good dose of suspense and an ending that, quite frankly, gives me goosebumps.

Rating:
Summary: A fine, gut tale of authentic character and moral struggle
Review: Matt Bloom has created not only a tale of moral struggle, but has evoked disturbingly real, multi-faceted characters that draw one in not by
contrived heroism or allegory, but by unflinching attention to gut realism. He does not sweeten his characters or scenarios to make them artificially sympathetic, but displays a finely honed sensitivity and courage to face and evoke the emptiness and search for authenticity of his range of characters and experience. This is all accomplished with the skill and depth possessed only by a true writer, one who yearns to and succeeds at creating new and genuine realities.

I not only had the pleasure of watching Matt immerse himself in disparate lifestyles in order to feed his writing over the years, but I boxed more rounds with him than anyone else may boast (he looked for me during a reading when asked about his experience, but didn't see me waving). It is an honor to have seen him turn his cultivated, unpretentious talent, his hours of training and taking (and slipping - he's really good in the ring) punches, and his uncompromised immersion into life, and turn them into literature that is both memorably fine and a pleasure to experience. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Synopsis and reviews of Matt Bloom's Blue Paradise
Review: Not since Studs Lonigan has a literary character been seared into our consciousness with such ferocious, unflinching honesty as Nick Gallagher.

Matt Bloom's Blue Paradise is a riveting, powerful urban tale that takes the reader to the lowest depths of New York's Hell's Kitchen. Writing in a style reminiscent of the best work of James T. Farrell and Lawrence Block, Bloom reveals a lonely, desperate world of heavy drinkers, prostitutes, bar fights, scam artists and losers...and a world where the indomitable human spirit can always be redeemed.

From behind the bar at Blue Paradise, Nick Gallagher has seen it all. His one hope of getting away from the rundown tenements and grimy streets of Hell's Kitchen is his next boxing match, the biggest fight of his career. But Jimmy, the local bookie, has a different idea. Nick's gradual and reluctant acceptance of temptation and his eventual triumph over evil will capture readers' attention for years to come.

From Hell's Kitchen to Times Square to the casinos of Atlantic City, this stunning literary debut delivers a knockout punch.

Here's what people are saying about Matt Bloom's novel Blue Paradise:

"...a morality tale for the 90's and a shining debut."- Terry George, Academy Award nominee, In the Name of the Father

Publishers Weekly: "An intriguing new writer takes on a very old story in this promising first novel, a morality play about a down-and-out Manhattan boxer who receives a lucrative offer to throw the ultimate fight of his career...[T]his novel introduces a talent whose ability to create interesting characters and drive them through a narrative marks him as an author to watch."

Nightlife: "'Blue Paradise' is a first novel by young Matt Bloom, who, like his hero, is a boxer. If you're expecting another Rocky, think again. This would be Rocky for the '90's Generation X.' Blue Paradise has the funky feel of a hot and nasty New York summer heat wave. It's about a bar with no air conditioning, and no future...[! I]t's the author's gift for creating atmosphere that wins us over. Any native New Yorker knows of summer nights so hot that you had to sleep on the fire-escape, or wished you could. The Paradise of Nick's realm is more like Dante's Purgatory, where you sweat-out a few eons before making it to the next level, which could be no blessing...Bloom replaces the 'Rocky'-type ending with a note of hope, much to the reader's surprise. And there you have the germ of reality behind his writing: he won't be phony, he won't give up the grounding in reality he gives his characters. Sure Nick and Alice will live happily ever after..maybe. If that's what you want. Or maybe he'll be knocked over by an angry bookmaker for squelching? You can think that, too. But New York is always there, steamy and very real." (Denis McKeown)

Rating:
Summary: full of heart
Review: This is a strong, compelling first novel written by an author who brings compassion and heart to each of his characters. I recommend it highly.