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Summary: Is this real?
Review: "Lost Legends" is a tale of real life, painful and confusing, in Northern New Jersey in the late 70's and early 80's. This book could easily have been a typical potboiler about infidelity, broken homes, and teen age sex, except that in this author's hands it is a story of painful complexity. First, the structure--Reiken starts in the middle with Anthony's mom (Anthony is a main character in his mid-teens) throwing rocks through a neighbor's windows. Anthony's dad calls out from the neighbor's house asking her to stop. Why is she doing this? Why is the father not in his own house? We can speculate but the truth is revealed slowly, with bits coming into focus throughout the book. We learn that Anthony's dad used to play the clarinet but one day abruptly stopped--only much later do we find out what really happened on that day. The story is really about love and making choices--those who find love but don't hold onto it pay dearly.Those who do find it and know it when they see it--no matter when in their life and at what cost--are the only ones who are happy. We almost feel sorry for the most despicable character in the book--Claudia--whose mission in life seems to be to wreck other's lives. In "Joeyland" we see how her own foolish choice has ruined everything for her. Most disturbing is the picture of teen age sex--not because of the general promiscuity of the characters, but because their relationships seem to do nothing but hurt each other, or allow one to control the other. For young people these characters are extraordinarily manipulative--in my book club we debated whether some of the characters were quite believable for their age. The novel's setting in New Jersey is a bonus for those who are familiar with the area, but familiarity is certainly not necessary for enjoyment of this novel. It's a thought-provoking and discussion provoking read.
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Summary: Totally enjoyable!
Review: I couldn't put the book down...if you were born and raised in New Jersey, this book is worth the read. Great character development, and an interesting story that spans a decade. Wonderful sensory detail....and the addition of actual places, towns, and street names make this book close to home. So much to identify with..it was truly a trip down memory lane.
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Summary: Teenage Wasteland Rings True
Review: I grew up in New Jersey just a couple of years behind Reiken's character, who is the same age as my brother, and the detail that's gracefully snuck in between dialogue is dead-on. I read this book when visiting family in NJ. Every now and then I'd ask, Mom, is there a Conservative synagogue on Northlight? the answer would always be yes. Reiken really knows his territory well, and captures the packed-in, yet desolate, feeling the New Jersey suburbs can hold for teenagers. He even understands the appeal Springsteen's working-class lyrics held for middle-class Jewsih suburbanites. I also love the matter-of-fact way ethnicity is treated, which also rings very true to my experience. This book flies by almost too fast to catch all the confusion, pain and hope in the life of the main character, whose parents' marriage has ended bitterly, and who has a tenuous relationship with the fast yet sensitive girl next door. It's to Reiken's credit that the characters all maintain some of the mystery of real people-- his mother, for example, has always been mentally unstable-- without resorting to authorial tricks. Reiken follows the dictum "show, don't tell"-- so although the narrator is unusually perceptive, we don't have to read long passages of explanation. Instead, a detailed description of seeing his father with his best friend's mother, at a Bar Mitzvah party, sears itself into the brain as it does the main character's. Reiken doesn't take sides-- everyone in the book has dignity and interest. A stand-out episode was when the boy and friends get lost trying to get home from the Meadowlands. Somehow this episode, which combined bravado, innocence, vulnerability and gratitude, sums up the experience of being a teenager-- going through transitions-- in a transitional time.
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Summary: Jersey Girl Loves Lost Legends...
Review: I have always been proud of my Jersey routes, even though people make fun of the way I say coffee (its CAW-FEE for all you non-Jerseyians). In this novel, Reiken manages to capture all the details of Northern New Jersey, and all the magic that can surround even the most ordinary places. This is a beautiful, sad story but it leaves the reader with a sense of hope. I would recommend this to anyone, especially New Jersey residents who know that you just can't find a real diner anywhere but Jersey.
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Summary: "Reiken Does It Again"
Review: I really enjoyed Frederick Reiken's first novel "The Odd Sea." His second novel is another enjoyable family saga about suburban life in New Jersey. Again, he has created characters you feel you've known as friends, relatives, and acquaintances, just ordinary people coping with everyday life, and its many trials and tribulations. There's sex, drugs, alcohol, extramarital affairs, & coming of age peer pressures and problems. You name it, it's here in this story. This is the story of the Rubins family that seems to be falling apart. I think the only character that really has it together is the grandfather, Max, who cherishes life, and meets the love of his life at 81 years old. Anthony Rubin, the young son, is desperately trying to find love especially with his neighbor Juliette. Jess, his mother seems to have so many psychological problems. She knows her husband is having an affair with Claudia, and just takes off for Florida. And there's Dani, the daughter. Well, I'll leave you to discover her problems. All these ordinary people seem to be wondering what to do next with their lives. Sometimes it helps to read about other people and their family problems. It helps you forget your own. I enjoyed this novel, and I really came to care about these people. I look forward to the author's next book. Oh, and I hope you find your true "b'shert" in your life, too!
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Summary: A Garden State classic!
Review: Sure, I grew up in Morristown and thus immediately identified with Reiken's setting (Livingston, NJ; the Turtle Back Zoo; the Jersey shore) and the characters. But Reiken's talent is taking the ordinary--the lives of a middle class New Jersey family--and digging until the magic appears. And magic is what we get from every point of view in this book. Anthony, the teenage hockey star, is our first-person character, and through him we learn about the world his family inhabits: its geographical location as well as its emotional landscape. The joy of the story is moving from this first person to the points of view of his father, his mother, his neighbor, and a few other characters who inhabit this space. All are searching or longing for connections, deeply personal connections. In the shadow of the Meadowlands complex, where a wrong turn off Route 3 can lead to danger or just surreality, connections are hard to come by, even within the bounds of your own family. Some of the jumping around in this book makes for the most fun. From revisiting high school from the point of view of the bully's girlfriend as he beats on some sorry kid to meeting a lover on a trip to buy bagels, Reiken gets you with absolutely fascinating magic moments. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: A wonderful book
Review: Sure, I grew up in Morristown and thus immediately identified with Reiken's setting (Livingston, NJ; the Turtle Back Zoo; the Jersey shore) and the characters. But Reiken's talent is taking the ordinary--the lives of a middle class New Jersey family--and digging until the magic appears. And magic is what we get from every point of view in this book. Anthony, the teenage hockey star, is our first-person character, and through him we learn about the world his family inhabits: its geographical location as well as its emotional landscape. The joy of the story is moving from this first person to the points of view of his father, his mother, his neighbor, and a few other characters who inhabit this space. All are searching or longing for connections, deeply personal connections. In the shadow of the Meadowlands complex, where a wrong turn off Route 3 can lead to danger or just surreality, connections are hard to come by, even within the bounds of your own family. Some of the jumping around in this book makes for the most fun. From revisiting high school from the point of view of the bully's girlfriend as he beats on some sorry kid to meeting a lover on a trip to buy bagels, Reiken gets you with absolutely fascinating magic moments. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: Excellent coming-of-age story about understanding love...
Review: This is a lovely little coming-of-age novel set in Livingston, New Jersey (not far from where I grew up!) in the 1980s. Anthony Rubin is our protagonist and is learning how to survive his father's infidelities (with his best friend's mother), his mother's fleeing then re-establishment as a single in Florida, his first love (the sexy Juliette who lives next door and whose father is reputedly in the mob), and his somewhat unexpected success as a high school hockey player. Anthony's voice is so authentic that it is hard to believe this was not written by a teen-aged boy, in fact, at one point early on I suddenly wondered whether this was really an autobiography. The author drops us fully into Anthony's world and we experience what he does... the midnight bike ride with his older sister Dani, the night they all got lost leaving the Meadowlands, the afternoon his mother broke all the windows in his best friend's house, the experiences of the group of young teens at the Jersey shore, and listening to an anorectic roommate give up while in the hospital for knee surgery. Probably the most powerful moment in what is an otherwise very moving tale, is when Max (Anthony's grandfather) falls in love and decides to remarry in his eighties. Everyone in the book is unknowingly looking for his/her "b'shert" (a Yiddish word basically meaning the love of one's life) and that is what makes the connection for any reader. It's all any of us are looking for.
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Summary: Modern Day Classic
Review: While this book maps out the geography and demographics of northern New Jersey in the 1980s, it is anything but regional fiction. The author's style, and the depth and range of his characters is virtuosic; moreover, this book has such momentum and such compelling characters that it's hard to put down. For a week I kept looking forward to getting back to these characters and their stories. The layers upon layers in this book and the philosophical questions that come up make it the kind of book I can imagine being read in college courses on contemporary literature. It's right there with Roth, Cheever, and Updike , as far as I'm concerned. I can't wait to read The Odd Sea.
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Summary: Powerful, heart-wrenching, beautiful
Review: With his knockout second novel, Reiken makes it clear that he is not a one-hit wonder. A much more complex and multidimensional book than its predecesssor, The Lost Legends once again demonstrates Reiken's uncanny ability to create characters we feel and know and remember. The most amazing thing about the novel, however, is that it simultaneously manages to depict suburban New Jersey as both mundane and magical. The author's gift is that he is capable of taking the ordinary and, while keeping it realistic, achieve a certain resonance that stems directly from the characters' varying and all-too-human points of view. In other words, the magic is not literally magic. Rather, we feel a sense of magic because at certain times we feel a character's sense of wonder and beauty rising out of the sterility of the landscape -- something like the plastic bag scene in "American Beauty." Reiken is masterful at this kind of thing and New Jersey is the perfect setting for such moments of quiet luminosity. In one scene, for instance, the main character and his sister take a nighttime bike ride across Livingston NJ under a full moon. What could easily be banal turns haunting under the glow of the moonlight -- no magic realism here, just emotionally charged childhood wonder (and sorrow). Likewise, the scene in which Anthony finds a garbage dump filled with old band instruments in the Meadowlands becomes legendary... This is a powerful, heart-wrenching book, a must read, whether or not you've ever driven the NJ Turnpike!
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