Fellow Round Table member Author Brad Holway
Amazon.com: When Jack Was With Us (9781434375087): B. K. Holway: Books
Kirkus Review--
Blood and sex-soaked history of the Bronx at mid century.
Holway presents a sweeping, panoramic vision of the Bronx in the 1950s and '60s, focusing on the residents of the Atlantis apartment house–a typically multiethnic enclave of colorful characters. Among the large cast are Kevin Maloney, promising young son of Irish barkeeps; the fractious Tragonazos, Cuban/Puerto Ricans boasting a bevy of comely, sex-obsessed daughters; Helen Klaszper, spinster schoolteacher; Father Gasparini, a sexually conflicted priest; Flip Cooley, a deranged, homicidal homeless menace; and Edmund Weiss, closeted homosexual and neighborhood intellectual. Each character receives a copiously detailed backstory which traces his or lineage, immigrant experience, racial and social background, hopes, dreams, frustrations and triumphs. It’s all a bit overwhelming, and the author includes a detailed index of each character and his or her significant relationships, which is crucial to following the action. And there is plenty of action–the narrative fairly teems with incident, taking on local and national politics, family crises, blood rivalries, ethnic tensions and sex, sex, sex. That is the force driving most of the key characters, and it occurs frequently, in myriad combinations and graphic detail. Indeed, When Jack Was With Us reads as an intricately complicated and lusty soap opera, a canny delivery system for Holway's insights into the social and economic pressures that shape the lives of his endlessly rutting, or fantasizing, charges.
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