Books |
About the Author: A Novel
John Colapinto
By
Published: Feb 06, 2012
Category:
Fiction
I like nothing better than to pick up a novel I knew almost nothing about by a writer unknown to me and go nuts for it.
John Colapinto’s “About the Author” is 250 pages long — my preferred page limit. Still, it was clearly about a writer, and as we know, there is no deadlier topic. Still, I plunged in. Here is the first paragraph:
For reasons that will become obvious, I find it difficult to write about Stewart. Well, I find it difficult to write about anything, God knows. But Stewart presents special problems. Do I speak of him as I later came to know him, or as he appeared to me before I learned the truth, before I stripped away the mask of normalcy he hid behind? For so long he seemed nothing but a footnote to my life, a passing reference in what I had imagined would be the story of my swift rise to literary stardom. Today he not only haunts every line of this statement, but is, in a sense, its animating spirit, its reason for being.
Damn, that’s a good opening. And, very quickly, I knew all I needed to about the narrator, Cal Cunningham, and his roommate, Stewart Church. Cal has come to New York to write a great novel. He works at a bookstore like The Strand, seduces women as lost as he is, and, on Sunday mornings, shares the stories of his conquests with Stewart, his drab law school roommate. But does he write? In two years, not a word. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
And yet, by page 50, Cal has the town’s hottest agent, a book deal, a movie sale and a good table at Michael’s. His career is made. All he has to do is sit back and enjoy his overnight success. But there is something he must do (I’m not telling) and he has to go somewhere and do it (and he does it). But once he’s there, another opportunity presents itself. By now, you are screaming: “Don’t go through that door!” But he does. And then….
I know I’m being maddeningly vague. That’s because I really don’t want to spoil your pleasure of reading this funny, taut little book. A literary thriller? No, that’s too serious. More like a great “Law & Order” episode. Lots of twists and turns, a major plot shift at the half hour mark and tidy, but credible resolution.
More famous writers could learn a lot from John Colapinto.
