Belmondo Style [Hardcover]

Adam Berlin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2004

Jared Chiziver is a single father and professional pick-pocket, devotee of Jean-Paul Belmondo and foreign films, and a suave ladies' man. His son Ben is sixteen, a bookish semi-introvert, a star on his school's track team, college bound and gay. Their unusual but quiet and affectionate life in New York City's Greenwich Village is ripped asunder by two singular events. First, Jared finally meets 'the one,' Anna, a photographer of criminals and death scenes - a woman he finds endless engaging. Second, in response to a brutal attack upon his son Ben, Jared breaks his own cardinal rule and commits the big crime, the one that draws the unflinching attention of the police. The only response possible to these events is to leave New York one step ahead of the police and embark upon a journey of both escape and discovery that will irrevocably change their lives.

Told from the point of view of the too-wise and too-adult Ben, Belmondo Style is an unforgettable tale which movingly explores the bonds between an unusual father and a remarkable son.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A father and son with an unusually close relationship wrestle with a hardscrabble life in Manhattan and the consequences of crime in Berlin's thoughtful, somewhat stagy second novel (after Headlock). Ben Chiziver, a bright sophomore at prestigious Stuyvesant High School, only wants the best for himself and his father, Jared, a handsome "player" with the ladies. Father and son jog together, eat together and have heart-to-heart talks about life, love and school. But there's a twist: Dad pays for their West Village apartment by picking the pockets of tourists and businessmen. Around the same time that Jared stops playing the field and falls for Anna Partager, a photographer of dead people, Ben has his first homosexual encounter, with a boy he meets on a solo run one night. This leads to a grisly bashing incident and lands Ben in the hospital, driving his father to commit a brutal act of vengeance. The attack dictates an immediate "vacation" for Jared, Ben and Anna to Miami, ramping the plot into overdrive as the robbery of an armored truck is planned and skillfully executed. But when the three escape to Key West, their luck finally runs out. For all the character-driven, on-the-run entertainment the novel affords readers, it feels as if Berlin has yet to display the full force of his narrative abilities. Intelligent and promising, this sharp, simmering sophomore effort feels like the calm before the storm.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Berlin follows Headlock (2000) with another stylish, atmospheric tale, this time about a single father who is a professional pickpocket and his bookish teenage son, Ben. Jared Chiziver is an expert thief who sticks to "stealing small" and has never been caught. He is also a player with a string of women behind him, doesn't like to plan too far ahead, and is enamored of the film Breathless. He regularly cadges Belmondo's moves and offers Ben advice in the form of film dialogue. Their close relationship and offbeat lifestyle are threatened after Ben is viciously attacked for kissing a male lover, and Jared seeks revenge. In addition, Jared seems to have fallen in love with a beautiful photographer named Anna. The three hit the road together for a recuperative vacation in Miami, but when their funds start to run low, Jared begins to think about "stealing big." Although the plot has a few gigantic holes, it hardly seems to matter. With its macho staccato language and riveting characters, this novel is all about mood and motion. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (April 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312319231
• ISBN-13: 978-0312319236
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,646,419 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, just wow!, March 23, 2005

By 

Avid Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Belmondo Style (Hardcover)

A friend of mine recommended this book, after the Publishing Triangle Award finalists were announced. I could not put this book down. While there is a gay theme that runs through this engrossing novel, it is most poignantly a coming of age story and the very delicate relationship between a father and son. Berlin doesn't seem to feel the need to make his characters likable so the effect is that they are more realistic, and their love for each other that much more real. I would never typically say this, but this book would make a great movie! I will definitely be reading this writer's other books.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Could not put it down, March 21, 2005

By 

Gay Divorcee "Book Addict" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Belmondo Style (Hardcover)

From the first page, I found Belmondo completely engrossing and disturbing. It was fascinating to see the depth of the father character. Although he made his living illegally and was in that sense immoral, he demonstrated a strong sense of responsibility as a parent. He played by his own highly romanticized version of the rules.

The disturbing aspect came from the knowledge that their lives were clearly on a steep decline. This made me unable to stop turning the page and at the same time wanting to stop turning the page. Berlin has a knack for this. I was afraid to find out what was going to happen to the characters in Headlock as well.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ow, September 25, 2004

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Belmondo Style (Hardcover)

BELMONDO STYLE is an accomplished novel of a young teen grappling with family issues and the fact that he thinks he's gay. Like many modern novels the characters are more cartoon-y than anything in real life and few readers will actually believe the "reveal" about what Jared Chiziver does for a living, for it was invented solely to make a movie out of it. I say that "few readers will care" because Adam Berlin, despite himself, is a poet of New York, like a modern day Lorca, and can make you read about and care about people far distant from oneself. "The World Trade center had once broken the view, holding solid, looking like two steel pillars thrust into Manhattan to keep it from floating away, but they were gone. The horizon became both more open and less open and my father continued to meet women."

He is a wonderful writer. The scene where the boy, Ben, meets another teen boy and has sex with him on the street is extremely powerful and one of the sexiest scenes of its kind ever written. But like the old days, their moment of ardor is punished by a terribly brutal beating and from this point on, the book becomes a sort of male version of the old rape revenge plot of 70s horror movies. Reading what happens to poor Ben, and then reading what Jared does to Ben's attacker, leaves the reader feeling sick in an almost physical way. No male reader can read those scenes without feeling that he's been punched in the balls. And still we read on, hypnotized, like cats somnolent in the heat of Adam Berlin's wonderful prose style.