The Art of Losing: A Novel

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The art of filming isn't hard to master...

this is an odd little book

Intelligent, Multileveled, and Highly Entertaining!

The Art of Losing: A Novel
Keith Dixon
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312358687
Release Date: 2007-02-20

Book Description

Michael Jacobs, a talented but obscure New York City filmmaker, has just watched his third film flop at the box office. With few options available, Jacobs is tempted by the prospect of easy cash when Sebby Laslo, his producer, makes a one-time offer. With the help of a corrupt jockey, Laslo plans to fix a horse race, but his gambling debts have left him untouchable and he needs someone he can trust to be the public face of the operation. Though Laslo is known for taking risks, Jacobs, hoping to repay an old favor to his friend, agrees to help.

Jacobs soon meets two Atlantic City bookmakers: Nikos Popolosikc, a quietly menacing restaurateur known for breaking hands; and Lad Keegan, a soft-spoken bar owner whose superstitions are bad for his clients’ health. When Laslo’s plan fails, Jacobs, heavily in debt, is ensnared by a violent underworld he neither knows nor understands. In the inevitable reckoning, Jacobs and Laslo become hunted men—and only one of them will escape.

Keith Dixon’s second novel is a morality tale of stunning resonance and breathtaking symmetry. Hard-boiled yet deeply contemplative, allegorical yet starkly realistic, The Art of Losing divines the corrosive nature of greed, the terrible power of recklessness, and the consequences that erupt when those forces meet.

Customer Reviews:

The art of filming isn't hard to master..........2007-05-30

Mike Jacobs gets a lot of advice in THE ART OF LOSING, and most of it is good. Some of it is from his would-be girlfriend, a Danish filmmaker who knits scarves and hats to remind her distant relatives that it's cold outside. Some of it is from his wealthy parents who caution him about the lure of money. And some of it is from tough guys who work for bookies and have no compunction about slamming Mike's hand in a door should he not be able to pay off his bets. It's all good advice, but he doesn't listen to very much of it.

Mike makes films, a process that is a gamble all its own. ("Films," you understand. Not "movies," never "movies.") The failure of his third film is the catalyst for the tale, and is instructive in and of itself. It is a documentary called The Daisy Chain (Mike never explains the significance of the title) that takes place in Bellevue, the psychiatric hospital in Manhattan. Mike spends a year of his life and every scrap of money that he can get his hands on to make the film --- cutting corners by having the psychiatric patients who are the subject of the documentary handle the camera work, for example.

The Daisy Chain premieres in New York, but only a few people show up. Certainly not enough to make the production company any profit, certainly not enough to get the film to a wider audience in arthouse theaters across the country, certainly not enough to sell the film to the cable networks, and certainly not enough to compensate Mike for the year he took out of his life to make the film.

So, you're an impoverished New York filmmaker, in between films, and you need money fast --- not just to make your next film but to make your next meal; not just to stave off the "starving artist" cliché but starvation itself. What can you do? What should you do?

What Mike Jacobs does is play the ponies. The novel opens up at Aqueduct, where Mike and his producer Sebby Laslo have a line on a sure thing, a 50-to-1 shot that will pay off huge if it can just manage to overcome its little problem of an injured tendon. The horse finishes last, consistent with Mike's own track record. But Sebby knows a jockey, and the jockey knows horses, so there might be a way after all to turn the tables on the odds and walk away with enough money for Mike to lift himself out of poverty without compromising his artistic integrity or begging his parents.

This requires Mike to ignore a lot of the advice he receives --- even though it's well-meaning, correct and meant to save his life. Author Keith Dixon sets up the first half of the book with any number of escape routes, ways that Mike can save himself by pulling out of his self-destructive spiral. And then, one by one, Dixon closes the routes, locks off the tunnels and artfully seals Mike's fate gradually.

THE ART OF LOSING benefits from more than the deft plotting and its cynical, paranoid tone. Dixon gives Mike a cinematic eye for details, describing even the most minute experiences --- visiting the eye doctor, getting a shaving cut --- in a vivid, forceful way. Dixon's dark take on art, the track and the lengths to which people will go for money is stark and engrossing --- and it just might help you listen to some of the advice you get everyday.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds,

this is an odd little book.......2007-05-13

not quite what i expected. but the writing is solid and the author has talent. i found some of the situations and the way people acted hugely implausible but still enjoyed the book. it's a noir. very dark and thank God the author didn't opt for a cute and happy ending. it's a nice distance from the "new" kind of crime novel that has to be cute and funny. If you like this you'd like Con Ed another very good crime book that is very much along the same vein as this one. it's good to see this kind of book getting some success. this writer had talent and the book just breezes along. can't wait to see what this author comes up with next.

Intelligent, Multileveled, and Highly Entertaining!.......2007-03-01

I started reading this book expecting a fun and sharply written crime-caper. After all, the advertised plot revolves around a documentary filmmaker (Mike Jacobs) based in NYC (which is beautifully rendered), who seeks fast money by placing bets on what appear to be fixed horse races. This plan, of course, is quickly complicated.

What I didn't expect, and greatly enjoyed, were the deeper levels of the story - themes of memory, conscience, and redemption. Yet while the book is thought-provoking, Dixon avoids cliches, and he avoids bogging down the story with exposition. The tale cracks along. "The Art of Losing" would make an excellent movie - especially if it was directed in such a way that the story retained it's subtlety.

Highly recommended.

Eudora Welty : Complete Novels: The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, The Optimist's Daughter (Library of America)

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Mistress of Southern Fiction
Greatest living southern writer

Eudora Welty : Complete Novels: The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, The Optimist's Daughter (Library of America)
Eudora Welty
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 188301154X

Amazon.com

This Library of America volume gathers all the long fiction published by the beloved Mississippi writer Eudora Welty. Throughout her long and storied career, Welty has been most famous, perhaps, for her short stories. But it's in her novels that she attempted some of her most ambitious and powerful creations: the idiosyncratic fable that is The Robber Bridegroom, drawing on legends, local history, folktale, and myth; the underrated, wickedly funny short novel The Ponder Heart; and Losing Battles, a familial epic 15 years in the making and begun in bits and pieces while Welty cared for her sick mother. In a strange inversion of the author's usual career trajectory, Welty's only attempt at a roman à clef came late in life, with the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Optimist's Daughter, the quiet, moving, largely autobiographical story of a woman coming to grips with her father's death. The novels alone earn Welty a place as one of the finest writers our century has produced; taken together with the Library of America companion volume, Stories, Essays, & Memoir, it's a body of work that William Maxwell calls "beyond human power of praising." Welty rarely strayed for long from the place of her birth, but her fiction is as capacious as the human heart itself. Like Faulkner, she has taken her own corner of Mississippi and made it encompass the world.

Customer Reviews:

Mistress of Southern Fiction.......2006-12-21

Each new volume from The Library of America, the non-profit publisher that has become the de facto literary hall of fame, is a cause for celebration. Its goal of preserving in an enduring format the best fiction and non-fiction is a significant bulwark against the encroaching tides of cultural relativism that attempts to render any value judgments meaningless, as well as a consumer society that insists that if it ain't new, it ain't good.

In the case of Eudora Welty, we're given two volumes: a collection of five novels ("The Robber Bridegroom," "Delta Wedding," "The Ponder Heart," "Losing Battles" and the Pulitzer-winning "The Optimist's Daughter"), and another of her essays, her memoir "One Writer's Beginnings" and her short stories. From her first published short stories, "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies" in 1937, to her last novel in 1972, Welty captures with her highly readable style and sharp eye and ear the varieties and eccentricities of Southern life.

But while the South claims Welty as one of its own, she may not necessarily return the favor. Teh cause is both geographic and a matter of choice. Although she was born in Jackson, Miss., in 1909 and lived there all her life, her father was from Ohio and her mother from West Virginia, a state created by the Civil War that went for the Union. This isn't Margaret Mitchell we're talking about here.

Then, in her essay "Place in Fiction," she stresses that while it is important for a writer to capture the feeling of an area, it is not the paramount goal in fiction:

"It is through place that we put out roots ... but where those roots reach toward ... is the deep and running vein, eternal and consistent and everywhere purely itself, that feeds and is fed by the human understanding."

But what pedigree does not provide, her environment probably did, for her work contains those elements poularly associated with Southern fiction. "Delta Wedding" celebrates the Southern family through the sprawling Fairchild clan and its passel of sons, daughters, cousins, aunts, great-aunts, nieces and nephews, all involved in each others' lives to a degree rarely seen today.

Many of her stories revolve around characters marginalized by society, struggling to exist and reach out to others: the simple Lily Daw who tries to evade the determination of the town's ladies to either marry her off or send her to the asylum; the generous, slightly retarded Daniel Ponder who would give away everything he has at the drop of a hat; the demented Clytie in "A Curtain of Green," who rushes about looking in people's faces until, seeing her reflection in a barrel of rainwater, dives in and drowns.

Eudora Welty was a sharp, perceptive writer, and her enshrinement by the Library of America is most welcome.

Greatest living southern writer.......2001-06-15

I began my acquaintance with Eudora Welty's works in college with One Writer's Beginnings and fell in love with the lyrics of her writing. I moved on to her short stories where I believe Ms. Welty surely shines brightest, but her novels are almost as wonderful. Very few people have the depth of insight into the mind and motivations of southerners that Eudora Welty has. She is right up there with William Faulkner. She has the gift of seeing and conveying the universal experiences of her decidedly regional cast of characters.

Since this is a collection of all of Ms. Welty's novels it is difficult to give a concise review. Suffice it to say that for reading pleasure you will not spend better money. The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize, but Losing Battles may be even better (the novel centers on all of the family stories told at a huge family reunion--great framing device for so many wonderful tales). The Robber Bridegroom is a southern fairy tale.

Book Description

Within the literature of madness, there has never been a memoir as wrenching and mordantly humorous as Jan Lars Jensen’s Nervous System. A quiet librarian who struck publishing gold with his first novel, Jensen felt as if something had come unhinged in his mind. The rush of ideas and language felt like losing, willy-nilly, a chunk of his mental stability. But true madness didn’t come until the countdown to his book’s release into the world.

A few months after selling his novel to a major American publisher, Jensen woke in a psych ward bed, only to find the ideas that had inspired him now roamed through waking nightmares that deranged him. Just as literature prompted Jensen’s slide into paranoid obsession, so did it help him rebuild and recover. Whether he was groping to comprehend James Herriot’s veterinarian stories through a haze of antipsychotic medication, deciphering his psychiatrist’s references to Patrick O’Brian novels, or attempting to steer his recalcitrant mind toward sleep with a history of logging, books and writing defined Jensen’s world.

This memoir recounts Larsen’s extraordinary experience. Terrifying yet tender, darkly humorous and deeply moving, Nervous System is a tale of literary madness like no other.

Customer Reviews:

Touching book with a humourous perspective.......2004-07-18

Highly recommended! Jensen has compiled his experiences of life in a world distored by mental illness, allowing the casual reader a window into his thoughts both as he undergoes a breakdown following publication of his first book, and his own attempts later to make sense of what happened. His humourous observations frequently lighten the deeper story that will touch the nerve of anyone affected by mental illness- either personally or through their family and friends.

its O.K........2004-07-05

Paranoia..the reason i picked up this book was because Jensen and I had something in common - we both had Psychosis. Although many have different episodes, experiences, but some similarities - Jensen's autobiographical portrayal of himself is quite witty. The book doesnt merely explain in details how his mind gets tangled up in his first book that he published - i mean- i guess you have to buy his first book -"SHIVA 3000"...but i wouldnt, this book was enough for me.

Nervous System: Or Losing My Mind in Literature.......2004-04-05

Roll up your sleeves and get ready to fight back with Nervous System. From leaving the book store I couldn't put this book down.

On Broken Glass: Loving and Losing John Gardner

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State of the Art Wacko
The Autobiography of Susan Thornton
a well-written downward spiral
take your time
Love is Blind

On Broken Glass: Loving and Losing John Gardner
Susan Thornton , and Susan Thornton
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Artists, Architects & Photographers | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0786707747

Book Description

This intimate portrait of a major American writer explores his tumultuous creative life and is a candid memoir of a love affair cut short by his violent death. "DIED. John Gardner, 49," read the Time magazine obituary, "prolific author of stylistically adventuresome fiction, enthusiastic teacher and sometimes, messianic literary critic, of injuries sustained when he lost control of his motorcycle and crashed; near his home in Susquehanna, Pa., four days before he was to have married for the third time." The woman John Gardner was to have married that September of 1982 was a vivacious, talented young writer named Susan Thornton, and On Broken Glass is the story of her exhilarating and sometimes devastating relationship with the author of Grendel, Nickel Mountain, The Sunlight Dialogues, and the award-winning October Light. Poignantly recalled from that moment when she first meets the seductive Gardner at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 1979, with stinging emotional resonance Thornton's tale relates both the rapture of ardent physical love and the torments of adulterous deceit. It provides, too, an insider's view of the troubling events that surrounded Gardner's untimely death at the same time that it explores the scope of his genius and maps the downward spiral of a demon-ridden alcoholic life. Intimate letters never before published further illuminate the creative appetite and imaginative power of this accomplished, often controversial novelist. On Broken Glass stands as a testament to a love that endures betrayals, trials, and tragic loss. It also comprises a profoundly realized affirmation of life, of continuance, and unexpected peace.

Customer Reviews:

State of the Art Wacko.......2006-08-12

Having spent 29 years in a profession involving daily dissection of my fellow citizens' "issues," and slogged through their troubles by the truckload, I have a certain tipsy weakness for books like this, for better or for worse. The profession, line of work, income level of the characters, the part of the good old USA they are from -- for that matter their race, religion, or whatever we all think is so damn important -- hardly matters or makes a jot of difference. We are essentially the same across our beloved fruited plains. The characters analyzed in this chronicle, John Gardner and Susan Thornton, are instantly recognizable, common currency of our wacko moment of history. More talent, more ambition, a jot of fame or extra $$ only fuels their insanity. These are indeed state of the art wackos, in love with the thrill of self-destruction. They are only able to feel alive when they are in excruciating emotional pain -- and who they dish it out to in the process is mere collateral damage. Indeed, if former spouses, students, colleages and friends get uppity about things, that only proves their moral inferiority in the eyes of our Great Sufferers -- who see such compadres as mere lesser mammals, incapable of Real Bigtime Cosmic Pain. Lesser mortals with less than the gigantic pain making and pain taking capacities of these so so special psychic suicides at large. Gardner and Thornton are here presented, doubtless accurately, as our cherished current hero types who live for passion and self-actualization, damn all else. And who thus most openly exercise, to quote the unforgettably wacko wisdom of Justice Sandra Day O'Conner, our greatest fundamental right as a people: to create, each single one of us, "our own universe."

Of course, if you attend places like Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, then you are certified by our corrupt literary and publishing establishment to (getting real solemn here now) "share" the experience, write "frank and gripping" personal chronicles in "carefully nuanced" prose . . . . To live out such craziness on behalf of all the rest of us, who vicariously, need whatever hit of the truly hard stuff we can get, from wherever . . . .

Yeah, I loved every word of it . . . .

The fact is, you can't condemn either of them for living it or her for writing it. Nor yourself, for that matter, for reading it. Indeed it is who we are. It is insightful and, coldly objectively speaking, useful. Who cares for fiction anymore, anyway? Life here in wacko land is so far beyond what anyone can imagine. And don't diss those big hair girls in the checkout line with their People Magazine, either. Us literary criterary all-American wackos need the same fuel too, just a more yupscale brand label.

Are we as a people capable of tragedy, anymore, or is it just bathos from here on out? Thornton's first person account begs the question. John Gardner's monumental talent, anyway, was quite obviously tragically wasted. I don't know what Susan Thornton might have become in that edgy vein of little magazines and writers' conferences, but on the evidence of this, she had some decent building blocks as a writer. The book is sort of a confession that the jig is up now, that she exchanged a grab at the golden ring for this, out of what she calls love. And of Gardner's earlier wives and "families," earlier "loves"? Well, no problemo, chillen' . . . indeed one of them was still around . . . why can't we go on as three? Let the booze flow, let the co-dependancy go terminal. One wonders if we're even worse off today than when Scott Fitzgerald -- another great self-destroyed artist and boozed out co-dependent offered up on the altar of passion and pushing the limits -- wrote, "There are no second acts in American lives." In America, your life itself is increasingly your artwork, apparently. Now, it looks like there are not even decent first acts. For God's sake, why even bother to create? You can get the same juice out of a bottle or by seducing an artist, living on the brink of exhilaration and despair.

Most paradoxically, Gardner's provocative masterpiece "On Moral Fiction" looms over this whole mess now like a giant runic curse, something out of his own medieval imagination. No, you cannot diminish an artist's great work by his later looniness. But I wish somebody would tell creative souls in this nation, especially the young, that to perform as an artist you don't have to be "different," crazy, odd, sexually berserk, plotzed on booze and/or drugs, wacko. Creativity is a normal and honorable human endeavor and perfectly sane and happy people can do it. Indeed they can be superior at it, especially if they exercise discipline, thoughtfulness, and hard work, and don't fall for the mob's cry for their blood for mass entertainment's sake. While I am thankful for Susan Thornton's at least partial honesty, and this record of our wacko times, I fear that something of the thrill of the wacko hunt is not entirely dispelled from her chronicle. This is finally my argument with the book, with myself for having read it -- like another trip to the liquor store. One wonders: if Susan Thornton would have been on that fatal motorcycle with Gardner, only lived to tell the tale, albeit maimed, what aftertaste then? Or is the American Dream now become so bonked out that not even a serious concussion can alter the ameoba-like, vacuous purity of the mush inside the personal "universes" of our skulls?

Four and a half stars, then, for Susan Thornton; I withold only 1/2 to reflect her own tacit honesty, that not only him but a big part of herself was killed in the process here documented. This is candor beyond what we usually get in first person chronicles of this nature. But I must still hold out for art -- yeah, stuff like Tender is the Night or O'Neil's Iceman. Only cold-eyed tragedy is purgative and speaks to the true universe -- a human society, a whole people, who connect well or badly but inevitably -- a matrix of relationships and influences that our insane concept of society as only a self-absorbed collection of "personal universes" in isolation increasingly negates. The loss of a writer and critic of the caliber of John Gardner -- and in these circumstances -- must be properly seen to impact us all -- not just himself and Susan Thornton.

Is there an artist in the house?

The Autobiography of Susan Thornton.......2006-01-10

Two stars because it's readable, but there's little here that adds to Gardner's biography.
Any admirer of John Gardner who doesn't get that he was emotionally scary has missed something in the novels and may want to read this self-absorbed book, but Gardner fans may find themselves increasingly annoyed with Thornton to the point of nitpicking: looking for flaws such as the many redundancies, the failure to make either Susquehanna or Binghamton seem like real places (Gardner did Binghamton with a single phrase: "a beautiful old lady with her teeth knocked out." ) the freehand with which she condemns almost everybody else with close personal ties to Gardner, including his parents and his ex-wives, even the variations in time-length between the hospital scene at the opening of the book and its reprise near the end.
To some of us Gardner remains a literary giant, using his erudition as a literary tool in much the same way Conrad used the sea, and with the same meticulous attention to language. Books like this one remain peripheral.

a well-written downward spiral.......2002-01-03

This book describes a relationship all of us has either heard about or lived with on some level. It is a well-written, captivating story. I could not stop reading. The great man or woman seduces, lures or entices the innnocent, less experienced man or woman. Neither is aware of the entanglement thay about to begin with each other although it seems obvious to everyone on the outside. The downward spiral that Gardner was on was a tragedy apparently no one could stop. Susan was only one of the victims of Gardner's alcoholic odyssey. I was happy to read that Susan was able to rise from the ashes and put her life on a different road. I wonder how his children and other family members endured.

take your time.......2001-11-25

this book was writting by a very good friend of mine. i have know her all of my life. It is very couragous of her to be able to write as much as she did but the good times and the bad. It is difficult to let people in your private life but i know she has grown from this experience. She is a beautiful person inside and out. The words are so vivid and you feel that you are experiancing the events right along with her. That is the purpose of writing. If a writer can do that then she has completed her mission as a author of this book and i feel that she has done this quite well.
sign
a good friend

Love is Blind.......2001-08-02

To me, John Gardner was egotistical, self-serving, and liked nothing better than the sound of his own voice. Ms. Thornton was nothing but a doormat, and a doormat who should have known better. Ms Thornton claims writing this book was therapeutic, brought closure, etc. Frankly, I don't think the book served its' purpose. She seems to be the same starry eyed person she was, when John Gardner first appeared on the horizon. And there is no doubt, that Ms. Thornton would have continued on her path of self destruction had John Gardner lived.

Average customer rating:

The Fear of Losing Eurydice: A Novel
Julieta Campos
Manufacturer: Dalkey Archive Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1564780201

Average customer rating:

Tying Up Loose Ends
A Good Book For All Blacks To Read
excellent thought provoking book
Hated it

Losing Absalom
Alexs D. Pate
Manufacturer: Coffee House Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

British | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1566890179

Book Description

fiction, the story of one African American family

Customer Reviews:

Tying Up Loose Ends.......2002-06-22

Absalom worked like a dog for countless years to ensure that his family had food on the table, a clean home, and a positive role model. Doesn't it always seem that as soon as hardworking folk like him get to a point in their life where they are in a position to retire, death or disease rear their ugly heads? Losing Absalom tells of this man and his toils. It seems, however, that there is no peace for a man who feels that his children are not living up to the values he set forth.His daughter is living in the home he worked so hard to buy, letting it go to pot, living with a drug dealer boyfriend who is bad news. His son has been reduced to a workaholic, ignoring his family and his Philadelphia roots - living in a city where you could count the black population on one hand. Far from home. Far from what Absalom taught him. On his deathbed, Absalom struggles to save his family from their self-destruction, fighting for that which is worth fighting for.

Alexs Pate never ceases to amaze me. With each of his works, it seems that he is talking to me, telling me a poignant story in a way no other author can. A gracious author true to his craft, Pate is the cream of the crop, as is evident in Losing Absalom.

Reviewed by CandaceK

A Good Book For All Blacks To Read.......1999-01-24

This book addressed issues that are central to many African American lives. I especially liked the book because it showed a black family intact and portrayed them as normal people working through family relationships and trying to deal with a crisis in a constructive manner. I do, however, wish the ending had more fully addressed the complexities of the situation.

excellent thought provoking book.......1999-01-04

This book opened up a whole new thought line for me. The strength that Absalom brought to this family at its start held them until the very end.This reminds me so much of the battles that some our black families face everyday. The outcome is never what you think it will be but the reality is. This brother writes with true feeling. I could feel each and every character all of their joy and their pain. I'm looking forward to reading more of his work.

Hated it.......1997-11-07

This book was so tedious, it was almost painful to read. The characters were one-dimensional, the plot was predictable and sometimes ridiculous. Worse, its message is that if you aspire to something more than a ghetto existence, you can expect alienation and death!

Average customer rating:

Great book
A painful journey through one family's downfall
Absolutely Brilliant
Wonderful
a fun page-turner that respects your intelligence

Losing It: A Novel
Alan Cumyn
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Sometimes those who have the most seem bent on throwing it away. Meet Bob Sterling, a comfortable middle-aged professor, a specialist in the life of Edgar Allan Poe, married to a former student with whom he has a young son. In the space of a week his family, marriage, home, career, sanity, and life are brought to the brink of ruin in the aftermath of a trip he makes with a student, the intense young poet Sienna Chu, who brings to life Bob’s long-harbored sexual fetish. Add to the mix the misadventures of his wife’s mentally failing mother and Sienna’s explosive techno-junkie roommate, and you have Alan Cumyn’s strikingly accomplished novel Losing It.

Whether describing an Alzheimer sufferer, a fetishist, a twisted poet, or a young mother whose life is suddenly spinning out of control, Cumyn reveals the eccentric sub-surfaces of our lives. Poignant, gritty, and tantalizingly erotic, Losing It is a high-wire act that plays out as an irresistible blend of darkness and humor.

Customer Reviews:

Great book.......2007-02-15

I gulped this book down in two midnight sessions, to the detriment of my productivity the next days.

Why was I so fascinated by it, and why could I not stop reading it? I think it was the author's probing into the minds of these apparently normal (well, except the mother) people who were all, in their own ways, totally losing it.

The descriptions of the mother, who has advanced Alzheimers, were brilliantly done, but I guess I have to admit they got a bit old as time went on. Mania can be pretty boring. But there weren't so many of those anyway.

Bob was brilliantly funny. We all have our secret fantasies, and it was nice to be plunged into the weirdness of someone else's. The trouble it got him into was delicious. Somehow the author made us just hold onto liking him enough to keep reading. I was actually pleased that he made it up with his wife in the end in spite of the fact that he's a lecherous old professor.

The impossible stress of a 2-year old ("nubbies!") and a senile mum in the same house was wonderful - hilarious and heart-rending.

Brave of the author too to take on the mind of a beautiful, sexy, but somewhat sick Asian-American college student. At her best she was fabulous - I loved the poetry. Not so convinced by her second thoughts after Bob got exposed on the internet in his red leather miniskirt (great scenes!).

The plot was probably a bit lame when I think about it, but the structure of the book leads you on without having to think too much.

Alan, I'm going to look for more by you. Thanks for the thoughtful and sometimes moving entertainment.

A painful journey through one family's downfall.......2004-08-15

I HATED this. I'll give it 2 stars because the writing. .the style, the characters, were all very good. The STORY and the lack of narrative arc were soul crushingly bad. Main characters include Bob, a middle aged English professor, Julia, his substantially younger wife (former student)who is a slave to her demanding toddler, Julia's mother who is addled with Alzheimer's, Sienna, a current student with whom Bob is infatuated, and Donny, a former classmate of Julia's, now home repairman.

The chapters switch in focus from character to character, each written in a style that helps further explain their identity. Unfortunately, this intelligent writing doesn't make up for the fact that the story is AWFUL. It is PAINFUL to experience Julia's paralyzing frustration with her mother's declining mental state. Tragic things happen to most of these people. Donny, who has several chapters devoted to him, ends up serving almost no purpose at all.

The jacket description refers to this book as "tantalizingly erotic", with and "irresistible blend of darkness and humor." It WAS dark, but not darkly funny. And not sexy. I can't imagine what the other reviewers found so amusing in this book.

In the end, there is no resolution. In fact, it feels like the book just ENDS with no closing, as if the last few chapters had gone missing. I fully expected to give this book 3 stars, on the strength of the writing, up until the last page when I realized there would be no resolution.

Absolutely Brilliant.......2003-11-08

I don't know what to add to that. If you like Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris, or A Confederacy of Dunces - you'll love this book. It's shockingly funny and good and I needed more at the end. Stunning!!!!!

Wonderful.......2003-06-08

I absolutely LOVED this book. The descriptions of when poor Bob got in trouble were wonderful. Mr. Cumyn writes beautifully. Can't wait for his next book.

a fun page-turner that respects your intelligence.......2003-03-29

This is a novel about an English professor whose efforts to pursue his sexual longings cause mayhem in his life, and whose efforts to cover up his activities cause him to spend a lot of time in various bathrooms engaged in clean-up operations. Told from the rotating perspectives of five different characters, the novel's first couple pages seem incomprehensible because they come from the prof's demented elderly mother-in-law, but don't let that scare you off--by her next narrative turn, you will understand everything, and the view from inside the brain of an Alzheimer's sufferer whose connection to reality actually declines within the course of the book is very well executed.
The other perspectives: the professor's young wife struggling with the round-the-clock demands of a toddler and her ailing mother, the handyman exploring new-age religion and harboring a secret crush on the wife, a gorgeous undergraduate with malevolent intentions and of course the professor himself.

Book Description

From the author of Somebody's Baby and The Girls comes a powerful and emotionally charged tale of infidelity and mystery.

Married for thirty-one years, Jack and Linda North live on a spread of land seven hours north of Los Angeles. But once a month, this retired police detective and grandfather of four makes the drive to L.A. and another woman -- Rachel, his mistress of six years. For a week, Jack tidies a different lawn, fixes the broken cogs in a different wheel, and makes love to a different woman with a different set of charms. There are no secrets in this triangle -- each knows the names of the players and the rules, and, despite the nagging disapproval of others, the triangle remains stable by tacit consent of all three. Until one hot, dry Monday when Jack leaves to make the monthly drive -- and never shows up. Now, two women who have held tight to their resentment of each other must come together to find the man they love.

With the uncanny ability to breathe real life into her characters, Elaine Kagan writes a courageous story of the uneasy alliance that binds a wife and a mistress. She explores the compassion borne of shared heartache and deftly describes a riveting journey of two women that breaks the pattern of countless stories of infidelity. Losing Mr. North is a brutally honest and brilliant rendering of an unlikely peace.

Customer Reviews:

Not her best work.......2003-09-12

I'm a huge fan of Elaine Kagan's work, have bought and read, then shared all of her books so that others might discover her work, too. The premise of LOSING MR. NORTH is interesting, but ultimately, I didn't like it as well as her other work. The reason is, I found it unbelieveable that both women--wife and mistress--enabled Jack North to behave so badly for so long. This made me impatient with them, and that lessened my enjoyment of the book. I really need someone to root for when I read and I wasn't in the mood to root for either one of these women. I could understand any wife forgiving a transgression if the husband seems really sorry and doesn't stray again (especially when there are children involved). But to go year after year after year pretending not to notice that he simply disappears for periods of time? To know he's had affairs all through their marriage and to never confront him? How could I have any sympathy for a woman who lays down on the floor and allows someone to walk over them again and again? And Rachel? Let's not even go there. Why was she so weak that she'd settle for so little? Oh, well. An author is not going to please every reader every time. I'll just have to look forward to Ms. Kagan's next book and hope it compares to her others that I loved.

Kagan has done it again!.......2003-09-07

Just spellbinding. I was enthralled and could not put this one down. Kagan creates characters that are so human. This subject is a very hard one and she handles it with grace.

Can't wait for her next book! Keep up the good work.

Likes and Dislikes.......2003-03-07

There were a lot of things that I didn't like about this book. I hated Rachel and Linda's codependency. I hated Jack's disappearing act. I hated Grace's continuing to take her husband back after his affairs ended. But the very things I hated are what made the book so true-to-life.

Let's face it, despit the fact that we are now living in the 21st century, many women lives still revolve around their men. The opportunities available to women are limitless and yet, we are still functioning as if it were 1950 when it comes to our relationships. Elaine Kagan understands this and her characters are maddening in their codependency. When Jack leaves Linda for his monthly visits to LA, her life slows down almost to a halt. She wanders aimlessly around the house, listening for the phone or his car in the driveway. Yet when he returns, she says nothing about his disappearance and life goes on until his next "trip". At the other end of the journey is Rachel. When Jack is scheduled for a visit her life stops as well. Her every move centers on his arrival and everything else including her children, grandchildren and poor beleagured friend Grace becomes unimportant. She thinks only of Jack and getting ready for him.

It is obvious, then, that when he disappears mid-trip, both women find their lives suspended. Rachel takes to her bed. Linda continues to wander around. When they find out that he is dead, they are both shattered and their grief is equally overwhelming.

I liked that this book featured older women. Personally, I am getting tired of reading books about 30-somethings and their problems. The population is aging and it is about time writers begin to address the lives of those of us who are creeping up on the big FIVE OH. Older women have a whole different set of life challenges and fiction needs to get with it.

The ending of this book was slightly dissatisfying to me. I suppose Linda needed to believe that Jack was coming home to her but somehow I just don't quite buy it. Otherwise, I felt that Kagan really got it right. I have been in that place of pain when a relationship ends and her descriptions of those feelings reminded me just how far down the emotional slide I can get.

I look forward to reading more of Ms. Kagan's work.

Great story............2002-08-09

Terri DuLong - Author of "Lost Souls of the Witches' Castle"
A very difficult subject, yet beautifully written. Believable characters and the entire novel has an element of mystery trying to discover what happened to Mr. North. I enjoyed the book very much and read it in two days. The ending was realistic, despite the fact I wish it could have been different.

Another Gem.......2002-06-17

Once again Ms. Kagan has written a novel of depth and emotion. I'm amazed at her ability to create characters that I feel so emotionally connected to -- this is not something that I find with many writers. Ms. Kagan has a particular gift for including more than one main heroine in her novels and describing their point of view, quite often in opposition to each other, in a manner that makes them seem real. The suffering of the two heroines as they await news about their beloved is almost palpable.

It's refreshing to read a book that's not about two sisters bonding, or a courtroom drama, as so many are these days, but rather about realistic emotions and not so happy situations.

I have read all Ms. Kagan's books and I'll eagerly await the next.

Average customer rating:
Losing To Win: A Novel
Theodore Davies
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0548359970

Book Description

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

Average customer rating:

My Losing Season
Pat Conroy
Manufacturer: Arrow Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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