Rating: 
Summary: True, so very True......
Review: "Father's Day" has such genuine soul and is so true in its dialogue and characters. Warm, funny and sometimes tragic - a bit like life.So often I read a book and I think "that's nice" or "how clever". But rarely do I read a novel that resonates with me as much as this one. The relationship between Matthew and his mother is deep and complicated and mixes love, fear and mistrust in ways that ring very true for me. And Galanes' perspective on gay dating perfectly captures its potent combination of fear and desire. PLUS, if you like Philip Roth and A.M. Homes, you won't want to miss "Father's Day". Highly Recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: This story never fully engaged me.
Review: "Father's Day" revolves around a mother and son as they deal with the death of their husband and father. The central conflict seems to be internal to Matthew as he tries to make sense of his relationship with his father in the wake of his dad's suicide. Matthew becomes addicted to a telephone dating service that is more focused on anonymous sex than long term dating. As he works through internal conflicts with his therapist, Matthew learns that the phone service and sex clubs are only devices that he uses to shelter himself from his real issue - the lack of an emotional connection with his father (surprise, surprise). Dad seems to have suffered from depression but that's never really flushed out in the story.
Although the writing is solid and the novel short, I had a very difficult time staying interested in the characters. I forced myself to finish the book thinking that some revelatory scene in later pages would pull everything together. It never happened for me. Can't recommend this one.
Rating: 
Summary: "My story may be carved in stone already"
Review: Father's Day is a competently written, but strangely un-involving story of family dysfunction and urban loneliness. The story opens with the main protagonist, Matthew Vaber, describing how his father shot himself in the head. He then launches into an attack on his bitter, disaffected, and self-absorbed mother who, it is gradually discovered, has had a secretive lesbian past with a childhood friend. While, living in New York working as an artists' representative, Matthew occasionally visits his psychiatrist, and seeks solace from his fear of intimacy by connecting to 555-PUMP, a phone sex service, and periodically haunting the corridors of The Downtown Club for casual, anonymous sex.
From the outset, it is obvious that Matthew has problems, not only relating to men but he also has unresolved issues with his Mother. Matthew's take on men is a mixture of the virulent with the yearning - he seems to be stuck in a repressed, withdrawn state of emotional retardation, but he also seems blurrily obsessed with finding a steady love interest. He admits that he's cornered the market on sweet and clever and funny, with more than a little handsome thrown in too, but nothing has ever worked for him. Pump Line is like "the new kid on the block," where Matthew can stalk the boundaries of his little cage in a continuous loop, around and around circling endlessly. When, however, he is brutally assaulted by an encounter gone wrong, he travels to Darien, Connecticut to visit his uncle. In a fit of indulgence, and using his uncle's phone, he again dials the Pump Line and connects with Henry, whom he hopes is a nice suburban boy.
Of course, Matthew can't keep the façade of true love up for long; he feels like a guy in chains, and soon enough he's back to his old, promiscuous ways. By effectively using flashbacks from Matthew's childhood, Galanes attempts to explain how Matthew came to be the way he is today, and he paints a picture of a family life mired in the dysfunctional, and the disparate. Father's Day is often subtle and poetic and its lively humor combined with its warm understanding of human nature, will probably appeal to many readers. Galanes does a good job of accurately capturing Matthew's youthful, bumbling viewpoint, and there is no doubt that the writing is rock-solid throughout, but for some reason, this reader rapidly lost interest in the proceedings. I read this novel over several days, but a novel of this length (only just over 210 pages) is probably better read in one sitting. Mike Leonard October 04.
Rating: 
Summary: Effective intertwining of pieces of a life
Review: Galanes adroitly blends the elements of Matthew Vaber's life. The novel begins with a statement that Matthew's father committed suicide while he was still in college. From that point we see Matthew traipsing through the Pump Line for the perfect man. Matthew goes to the baths to have anonymous sex. He yearns to find a boy friend and when he does, he keeps testing him. His trips to see Goldstein the psychiatrist have him analyzing the doctor instead of investing into his own psyche. Matthew's relationship with his mother derives from the need to be approved and the need to defeat her.
Through these intersecting episodes we see a person emerge, fearful, nostalgic, yearning for what was lost. He describes a scene of himself at the age of six when his father wakes him up and carries him to the kitchen to plan a surprise for his mother. Matthew thinks that he'll go along with any plan as long as it involves being carried by his father. The father's suicide leaves unfinished business. It is that business that has Matthew sojourning so pathetically down dead ends.
Galanes is able to keep us interested in Matthew by hearing Matthew tell stories of himself that are at once pathetic and humorous. We see Matthew with his worts, but we empathize with him, cheering him on to self-discovery.
Rating:
Summary: Fun book and a great read
Review: I just heard the author give a reading in Philly. He was a great performer. I read the book in two long sittings over the weekend. I loved the way the short scenes moved backwards and forwards in time. Tonight, he read a sad scene about a father's death, followed by a really funny one about the same father teaching his son how to drive. It was a nice combination. Almost wish I could have bought an audio book.
Rating:
Summary: LA Times was right.
Review: I saw a great review of Fathers Day in the LA Times this weekend. It called the book 'tart' -- which I liked the sound of, also comic and heartbreaking. So I read it in a single sitting, which is very unusual for me! I really liked it -- and the LA Times was right, it is tart and heartbreaking and comic too. I was really rooting for the main character and I hope the author continues this guys adventures. Big time recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: LA Times was right.
Review: I saw a great review of Fathers Day in the LA Times this weekend. It called the book 'tart' -- which I liked the sound of, also comic and heartbreaking. So I read it in a single sitting, which is very unusual for me! I really liked it -- and the LA Times was right, it is tart and heartbreaking and comic too. I was really rooting for the main character and I hope the author continues this guys adventures. Big time recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: A great and delightful read
Review: I was going to title my review "a great summer read" but actually this book, which I thoroughly enjoyed (and didn't want it to end ..which I guess is a real compliment to the author) is a novel for all seasons --it's funny, poignant, --all those words that one uses to describe a "good read." I really couldn't put it down ... I took a peek at some of the other reviews and they have said what I want to say far better than I can ..but what I enjoyed most about this book is the author''s "voice" --- by this I mean that this book seems so personal that I felt that I amost knew the author, and his life experiences, by the time I finished it . I highly recommend this book to all....
Rating:
Summary: Too facile
Review: I was going to title my review "a great summer read" but actually this book, which I thoroughly enjoyed (and didn't want it to end ..which I guess is a real compliment to the author) is a novel for all seasons --it's funny, poignant, --all those words that one uses to describe a "good read." I really couldn't put it down ... I took a peek at some of the other reviews and they have said what I want to say far better than I can ..but what I enjoyed most about this book is the author''s "voice" --- by this I mean that this book seems so personal that I felt that I amost knew the author, and his life experiences, by the time I finished it . I highly recommend this book to all....
Rating:
Summary: A Very Fine First Novel
Review: Matthew Vaber, the narrator of this very fine first novel by Philip Galanes, manages a posh New York art gallery by day; in his free time he runs up telephone bills calling a gay sex line called "The Pump Line," where, when he describes himself, he slices five years off his age, and visiting a gay bathhouse. He also spends a lot of time obsessing about the recent death by suicide of his father and his relationship with his mother, along with his lack of a lasting relationship with a good man. All these topics get worked on in his weekly visits--when he keeps them--to his psychiatrist, Dr. Goldstein. Was he responsible in any way for the death of his father? Why didn't he see his suicide coming? Is his mother a lesbian? Why must he expect any man he meets to be perfect? The time sequence goes from the present to Matthew's life as a youngster and times in between. There is a poignant account-- getting close to home-- of his being dragged to a baseball game-- when he is in the sixth or seventh grade-- by his parents and being called a "strikeout queen" by Jimmy Parker, a smelly kid who lived in a trailer park. Sometimes Matthew can be a real pain; then you remember that he is a little or a lot like too many people you hold near and dear, and in a moment of rare self-awareness, you figure out that he sounds an awfully lot like yours truly. This book is a quick, easy read-- certainly no requirement for a good literature-- it is very well written, has some profound thoughts as well as interesting turns of phrase. I hooted when I read that "a little a cappella flute goes a long way," having had a colleague years ago who insisted on serenading everyone who would listen with endless flute solos. If you stay in your room-- described by the author as little tombs-- at the baths rather than walk around, you are like a doggy in a window. When Sheila, Matthew's mother's friend as he says, "sees through" him, he feels both pride and gratefulness swirling together like "tasty ribbons of a Bundt cake batter," an apt image to be used by this sort of gay guy. Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Here we have on the jacket cover a photograph of an expensive lemony yellow cable-knit sweater and the book is bright yellow. This yellow sweater plays prominently in one of Matthew's escapades as a young man. The information about the author says he has a law degree from Yale. Let's hope he makes a good living as a fine writer and doesn't have to practice law. We have too few good writers and too many lawyers of any kind.
|
