Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 231 pages
- Published by: Permanent Press NY September 30, 2006
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 1579621325
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1579621322
-
Book Dimensions:
8.7 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
- Weighs: 9.6 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Grim, joyless and mostly friendless, Edmund Naughton is a white divorcé who buries himself in his work as a computer programmer and lives a solitary life on New York's Upper West Side. He impulsively offers shelter to Careese, a recovering black alcoholic, who is homeless, has little education and is shakily attempting to stand on her own. It's an edgy arrangement: Careese has a relationship with the building's super and can't keep her pusher brother Camron from hanging out in the apartment; Edmund, with the pretext of rendering Careese productive in the workplace, buys her sensible clothes and grooms her for a secretarial job, but is already growing emotionally attached. Despite a surface aversion to each other, they share a bond as wounded parents: Careese's 10-year-old daughter has been taken away from her because of a careless, drunken burning incident; Edmund 's college-age daughter hates him for failing to save her from her abusive stepfather. Laser (
Old Friend Old Pal) overplays their nagging black-white assumptions about each other (and about secondary characters like Careese's ex-DeVaughn). Though moments in their relationship ring true, the whole has a schematic feel.
(Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Product Review
" brutally honest about the difficulty of bridging the racial gap and the assumptions blacks and whites make about one another." --
Library Journal" brutally honest about the difficulty of bridging the racial gap and the assumptions blacks and whites make about one another." --
Library Journal, September, 2006
Reader ReviewsMichael Laser manages to give just the right amount of detail to make the characters realistic, without overwhelming with tons and tons of what I often consider pointless details that just make so many novels so darn looooong! And he always comes up with just the right details--that seem a little surprising but not too surprising--to deepen each character. I also like that the story doesn't have a pat "they lived happily ever after" kind of ending. The two protagonists seem like real people in a totally true-to-life situation. I really felt for them and enjoyed being in their world for a certain amount of time each day. I was sorry when the novel ended, even though it seemed to end at just the right moment.
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