Uncle Max

Rating:
Summary: A Wolf In Beach Book Clothing
Review:
Before I begin actually reviewing this book, I have a confession to make. I just finished a search on the rest of Mr. Chris Kenry's work. I would honestly read (With out being paid or commanded by the people that cut my pay check) another of his books. To read a book a few years after it was released, and see that the author hasn't fallen off the face of the earth is exciting. If I enjoyed this book that was written in 2002, imagine how great at his craft he as become in the subsequent years.

"Uncle Max" is a tricky book. Like the guy that says he wants a relationship but is actually only after a one night stand, the book poses to be one thing and actually is another. "Uncle Max" unabashedly bills itself as a comedy. It wants you to believe you're supposed to read it under a glorious beach umbrella while your friends play football on the beach spanning in front of you. It wants you to believe you're supposed to read little paragraphs from it to your friends over lunch so you can all comment on how witty it is. Let remind you that this is what the book WANTS you to believe.

This "fluff" perspective the book has of itself is very limiting. Sure, parts of Dillon's story about the end of his adolescence and his entrance into adulthood are humorous, but not in the casual beach manner the book wants you to think. It's a very black humor, as we are supposed to find most of the humor in his interactions with his alcoholic, newly religious mother and his criminal, pedophile uncle. (Insert laughter here.)

Dillon's life, for a 14 year old, is about on par with the normal dysfunction the average American family seems to attract these days. His mother decides, after two failed marriages and years of massive anger displacement towards Dillon, to "discover" religion and give up alcohol. Just as Dillon is preparing for his baptism and all the religious glory that comes with it, he finds the alcohol his mother left behind. One thing leads to another, and his ever loving mom decides the best thing to do with the problem child is to send him away to a Nazi-err...Church Camp. Enter Uncle Max.

Instead of getting a fairy godmother interjecting and fixing his life, Dillon gets Max. A former drug dealer and convict, Max will seduce anything that gets in his way. Man. Woman. Nephew. Whatever it takes. A real go-getter, it's not long before Max seduces Dillon into a web of crime and deception. In the end, we are left alone with Dillon and a mountain of question marks, BEGGING for a sequel.

Chris Kenry's characters reminded me of Mr. Chuck Palahniuk's characters ("Fight Club," "Invisible Monsters"), and I mean that in the most complimentary way. There was never a moment in all of the character's misadventures where they acknowledged that they were horrible people doing horrible things. Aside from Dillon's 14-year-old flexible sense of right and wrong, none of the supporting cast has a sense of morality. Everyone has their share of flaws, and everyone follows the rules of living in a glass house. No one wants to throw the stone that sends the glass house tumbling down.

So, we have mayhem. Robbery. Incest. Religion. Alcoholism. A virtual how-to guide for shoplifters. Drugs. Divorce. Insurance fraud. A cast of characters that marvel in their wicked smuttiness. Not to mention the coming of age story that glues all these themes together.

Yep, it's clearly the perfect book for your casual day at the beach.

Fortunately for me, morality bores me. I hope the rest of your work mirrors this one Mr. Kenry. If so, you have a fan.


Rating:
Summary: SEQUEL SEQUEL SEQUEL
Review: A surprisingly interesting read. i was looking for air head read and i got something that was more than just subway material to pass the time. however it was way too short, i demand a sequel, Dil needs to go looking Max! Yes indeed!

Rating:
Summary: Dark and funny
Review: After Can't buy me love this was the second novel by Chris Kenry that I read. It's very well-written, funny but it has some definite dark undercurrents too. And as with the first book, the image on the cover doesn't do this novel justice at all. Can somebody please have a word with the art department at Kensington Publishing so in future this won't happen again? One more negative: the story ends way too soon. So dear, DEAR Mr. Kenry, will you please consider writing a sequel? Maybe call it Max & the City of St. Tropez? ;-))

Rating:
Summary: EXPECTED AN UNCLE MAME, BUT GOT OLIVER TWISTED INSTEAD!
Review: Before I say anything about this fine book which really earned my five stars, I have to express one complaint about the publisher and the dust jacket illustrator. Both should have read the book before plopping an illustration on the cover, which not only has nothing to with the book's theme but also creates an entirely different impression of what the book is about.

In other words, it is not the totally "FAB" gay summer romp the jacket suggests. Instead, it tells the coming out story of fourteen-year old Dillion who happens to be named for the lake where by accident he was conceived. A product of a multiply broken home, an alcoholic abusive mother, a junior high school system out to get him, and his own budding sexual inclinations, Dillion seems to be heading toward depression and alcoholism (and/or bible camp and military school) all on his own.

Just when everything looks as bleak as possible, Uncle Max (black sheep, ex-con, and would be Fagan) appears in the wine cellar to save the day (?) for Dillion. He then proceeds to introduce him to shoplifting, Balzac, cat burglary, mountain (and wall) climbing and eventually life itself.

Fortunately, Kenry's witty and expert story telling skills save the book from being as depressing as it might sound. Uncle Max is a hard character to love - you want to, but he's so ... self-indulgently Uncle Max. Dillion, on the other hand, you can't help but love. You know that no matter how the book ends, he'll find some way to be a winner.

While UNCLE MAX is a notch below Chris Kenry's outstanding first book CAN'T BUY ME LOVE, it still is very enjoyable reading, and I recommend it to you all.

Rating:
Summary: For all the right reasons....
Review: Chris Kenry continues to create the best current genre fiction this reader has encountered. Why? Well, it has all to do with his natural gift as a story teller and very little to do with any misguided and irrelevant judgments based on the presumed morality of his characters. Like his acknowledged literary mentor Balzac, and in a more familiar vein Charles Dickens, he invents rogues and proceeds to humanize them.

Uncle Max is no exception. This largely unloveable creature is a textbook case out of the DSM, cast as a foil for the teenage narrator Dillon. Plotted as a sort of coming-of-age tale over the course of one summer, a collection of bizarre yet fundamentally realistic episodes carry the reader once again (as in last year's Can't Buy Me Love) into the Denver demimonde with which the author is intimately connected.

The young Dillon has to deal with all the usual teenage problems of angst and rejection during his seminal summer of growing up. Worse yet, everyone around him is dysfunctional. The fact that he endures it all and keeps his wits together is the heart of this ostensibly immoral morality tale. Lust, crime, infidelity, heartbreak? Sure, it's all there -- but what a lesson!

For the reader who gets carried away with cover art and figuratively takes this book to the beach, disappointment lurks. For Kenry is essentially a serious rather than a comic or pornographic writer, whose talents have only begun to emerge as he experiments with classic themes in the guise of "gay" fiction.

This reader looks forward avidly to not only more stories in the same vein, but further adventures of the naughty but nice Uncle Max as well.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Entertaining
Review: I bought Can't Buy Me Love (the authors first book) one day when I was browsing, looking for something different and fun to read, and I enjoyed every minute of it. So I didn't think twice when Uncle Max came out. I shelled out the money for the hardcover--and I wasn't disappointed. It was funny, poignant and even heartbreaking in places for what Uncle Max, Dillon and even Dillon's mother went through. At this rate Chris Kenry is going to be one of the few authors I actually will keep buying (even at -groan- hardcover prices). I'm looking forward to the next.

Rating:
Summary: Another Great Read From Chris Kenry
Review: I must get something off my chest...I'm so fed up with critics who dismiss books simply because they aren't "serious" fiction. If a book is fun to read, they write it off as fluff or catagorize it as a good "beach read". Just how many dreary coming out stories and AIDS novels does a gay boy have to read anyway? I really enjoyed this book. It was fun to read, imagine that! If you enjoyed Can't Buy Me Love, then you'll like Uncle Max. Both books share the theme of wacky scheming that gets the lead characters into lots of trouble. The uncle Max of the title is like a gay male version of Auntie Mame, but with a darker edge. Max spends the summer teaching his nephew the finer points of rock climbing, shoplifting, Balzac, and burglery. It didn't end quite like I expected, but life doesn't always go acording to plan, I learned that from uncle Max.

Rating:
Summary: Seriously disappointing
Review: I rather enjoyed Kenry's first book, Can't Buy Me Love, so I looked forward with anticipation to this one. I was sadly disappointed. The machinations of the characters are grotesque, and while the lifestyle depicted is so overdone as to be obviously fictional, I am nevertheless offended by the glorification of robbery, falsehood and self-indulgence that Max attempts to teach Dillon. I realize that this is not intended to be a serious work, nor is it intended to teach a way of life - but it is nevertheless extreme to the point of distaste. Max's attempts to manipulate everyone around him are almost nauseating, up to and including seducing his nephew. Max is self-centered to the point of blindness, and I found myself hard-pressed to maintain an interest in his schemes. Dillon fails to see anything aberrant in the behavior he is being taught. He ultimately recognizes Max's selfishness - but indulges him anyway. At the end, I found the whole mess singularly unpleasant and thoroughly unamusing.

Rating:
Summary: Nice'n'Fluffy!
Review: Kenry continues his momentum as a first-class writer of ultra-lightweight fiction, but I believe his writing abilities may be greater than he's letting on. This is a comic novel, easily and quickly read, but the writing itself feels just a tad more substantial and compelling than much of the literary junk food you find so often in this genre. I, too, hope Kenry will soon expand his horizons a bit and perhaps give us something with a little more heft and tooth. I believe he's certainly capable of it.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book of Mystery...
Review: This was an excellent book, and the second from author Chris Kenry (Can't Buy Me Love). In this book we meet fourteen-year-old Dillon: a self-described nerdy band gay boy in too-small clothes accessorized by a clarinet case and orthodontic headgear with a robin's-egg-blue satin strap.

Fresh from the rigors of junior high school gym class and daily torment by jock Aaron Lewis, Dillon is in desperate need of a three-month reprieve. Alas, that isn't to be-not after his mother, Lana, stumbles across his stash of empty wine bottles and Sears catalogue pages featuring scantily clad male torsos. Unfortunately for Dillon, Lana has recently swapped booze and overflowing cleavage for fervent devotion to the one man who can never leave her-the Lord Jesus Christ-and to the Lord's earthbound henchman, Wayne Blandings, Assistant Pastor at The Church of the Divine Redeemer. Alarmed at the diabolic evidence of Dillon's drunken, perverted nocturnal hobbies, Lana and Wayne conclude that Bible Camp is his only hope. Now, on the verge of being shipped off to the Christian barracks, Dillon needs salvation of a different kind...

Before you can say "halleluiah," Dillon's personal savior materializes-fabulously shirtless and smoking a French cigarette. Perpetually on the lam, Uncle Max needs a place to hang-and hide-out for awhile. But the flamboyant Francophile can't seem to elude a colorful mini-entourage that includes his parole officer, Meredith; his sexy mountaineer boyfriend, Serge; and fellow con artist/antiques dealer Jane Nguyen. Much to Dillon's amazement, loathsome Lana isn't all he has in common with the dashing family black sheep. Sprung from the proverbial closet at last, Dillon finds himself under Max's supervision for the summer.

This story entails Hitchcock films, Balzac novels, and a crash course in shoplifting, from which Dillon swiftly graduates to insurance fraud and art heists. Now, as Max and Jane's devoted sidekick, he's the third member of the notorious "Balzac Bunch," who specialize in befriending blue-haired, blue blooded bridge players-and then relieving them of their priceless antiques. Too quickly, sultry July gives way to steamy August, and the heat is on in more ways than one. Now the cops are closing in, and only two things are certain: that autumn and Max's departure are imminent-and that for Dillon, nothing will ever be the same again...

You must read this book, it was grabbing and highly enjoyable.