Customer Reviews

Buffalo Lockjaw

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Buffalo Lockjaw is a brilliantly written story about a son who feels responsible for his mother's current, debilitated state. After talking Ellen out of suicide when she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's Disease, James Fitzroy sets out on a journey back to his hometown of Buffalo to, for once in his life, do something of meaning, to save his mother from her suffering and follow through with her own wishes. Buffalo is the perfect backdrop for the story, not only because this is where the author grew up, but because,like the main character's mother, Buffalo is a city that is full of life and beauty, but is, in many ways, suffering. In a very clever way, the author teaches us much about Buffalo through several character sketches sprinkled throughout the first half of the novel, characters from the city of Buffalo that the main character, James, interviewed in his earlier days while conducting an ethnographical study. For some reason (unknown to himself at the time), James is listening to a tape of these interviews when he drives into Buffalo, and through his continued listening of it, the reader begins to learn about the city of Buffalo and comes to understand it as its own rich character in the story.

Throughout the course of the story, James finds that his past seems to collide with his present as he works through his decision to help his mother. We're introduced to his family and see the pain and heartache that surrounds watching a loved one suffer from advanced Alzheimer's as she becomes more debilitated and loses her sense of self. We also see the guilt that consumes James as he watches his mom suffer. He feels responsible for her current state, because, after all, he was the one who talked her out of suicide. No longer capable of conveying what she wants, James wants to make things right, but he finds himself locked within his tendency to be more of a witness than a participant in life. This story could definitely make for some really heavy drama, but the author seems to perfectly blend the heartfelt drama with comedic relief. He cleverly juxtaposes the heartache with funny encounters and witty exchanges with James' childhood friends and pseudo love interests. Within this context, the reader comes to understand how truly trapped and disconnected all of the characters are in their current lives. They all seem locked in their most vulnerable states, especially James. He's trapped in the past, in his mind, in his self destructive role, and in his wanting to save Ellen.

This notion of being trapped is carried throughout the novel and then linked to the title of the book and the idea of Buffalo Lockjaw. Not only was this really good writing, but within this context, I found myself wanting to piece things together, as if the story was its own puzzle. I wanted to know answers about the characters and wanted to learn more about the depth of James' grief, particularly in relation to his mother. The answers are all there, but the reader has to dig around a little bit to fully understand the characters (including Buffalo) and their relationships. Consequently, it's almost like the reader is on a journey to uncover things about James' past and to fully understand him. This had me rooting for James to finally do the right thing, to escape his past and present, and to do and be more. To me, all of these elements working together make for good literature. A lot of contemporary books are too commercial, too contrived, and so obvious. Buffalo Lockjaw isn't like that. It's multilayered, it's full of so many different facets, it evokes an emotional response, and it's REALLY good writing.

The book is also full of so many great lines, lines that really make you think. It lends itself perfectly to book club discussions. Usually, when I read a book club selection, I mark passages and lines that I found to be really telling or poignant, stuff that makes for great discussion. In a given novel, I typically find a few lines that are worth noting and sharing with the group. Buffalo Lockjaw is chock-full of TONS of thought provoking lines and ideas. It gets the reader thinking a lot about who we are and where we come from literally and figuratively. It makes one wonder about how memory works and how our childhood and where we are raised really becomes so central to what we remember. And the thought provoking lines? There were so many. I think my favorite one was the line from one of James' philosophy professors, "If you've got one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you're pissing on the present." How brilliant is that? That's so poignant in its own right, but especially poignant for James, who is totally pissing on the present for so much of the book. The reader wants him to step up and take control of his present life and relationships, but, ultimately, he never really does.

I was really glad the author didn't do the resolution thing at the end and make things neat and tidy. Life in general, especially James' life, is just too messy for that. Instead of the predictable happening, the author chooses to end the novel in a quieter and more subtle way, a way that is much more fitting to James' character. In other words, James may not save the day in the manner that one would initially hope for (Thank God, a writer who didn't cave!), but he does come to better understand Ellen and what she wanted for herself and for him. Through some telling letters written by his mother, James and the reader learn that Ellen, as a mother, feels a level of responsibility for her son's insecurity. She's been trying to teach him to save himself, and he's thinking he needs to save her. Really, all she wants is for him to not quit, to try, "to move a muscle" (note: I'm trying not to spoil the ending here). I love that he figures all of this out on his journey to save his mom, which is really the biggest selfless act. Even more, I loved that there was this dual level of James being selfless that wasn't so overt and made the ending seem less resolved. This is an ending that really satisfies the reader because it's quiet and humble and very true to James' character.

Can you tell I loved Buffalo Lockjaw? It was hard not to love it. It's a powerful story with a universal message about life and memory and love. Be here, be present, start living now. And, underneath the message, there are so many great things happening within the story and the writing - it's beautiful, it's brilliant, and it's really hard to let go of it when you're done.

My mother gave me Buffalo Lockjaw for Christmas this year, and I ripped through it within three days. It's easily the best book I've read in a very long time. Full disclosure, however, I am a late 20s Brooklyner who grew up in Buffalo and high tailed it out after college.

so touching on so many different levels. personally, i loved how it dealt with the "you can't go home again" feelings one can get upon returning to one's hometown. sometimes you feel guilty for leaving and sometimes you feel like a sham for leaving - the author conveyed those feelings to me and in some cases brought them out of denial and made me confront them head on.

his style of writing is refreshing also. i loved the interspersing of testimonials within the chapters of classic buffalo characters....too good!


as you can see i greatly identify with this character, so i'm obviously biased. i can't recommend this book enough however. it's a quick read but can be revisited time and time again. if you grew up in a mid sized or small town and moved to the big city......this is the best book for you to read right now, especially after going through the guilt of leaving after the holidays.

in closing: READ THIS BOOK. haha

These are the words I heard more than once as a psychotherapist working with young people who's parents were in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. In "Buffalo Lockjaw" Greg Ames really gets it right. His narrator's description of this tragic loss is poingnant and accurate. His mother no longer recognizes him. She no longer speaks intelligibly. She has only rare flashes of her old and much loved personality. Yet her body lingers on. The narrator, his father and sister each deal with their feelings about this differently and the story is compelling.
While there is much more to the novel than this, it is for this reason that I will highly reccommend the book to my colleagues and anyone I know who is in any way dealing with this horrible illness.

I met the author at a local coffee hangout, Cafe Aroma, about 8 years ago as a friend of my son, Stosh. Even then I could see that Greg had a great way of telling a story, humor and sadness rolled into one. With the talent of a great comic, the author in Buffalo Lockjaw makes you laugh and cry at the same time. Having a mother with dementia, I knew the story all too well. After reading Ames' book I was able to find a little humor in such a tragic disease. Telling a personal story that is universal, Greg Ames kept it beyond personal, personal,compassionate and emotional.

I am terribly picky about books I read and with no rhyme or reason. I was drawn to "Buffalo Lockjaw" because of the plot summary on the back cover.

I just finished reading and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Greg Ames beautifully captured the feel of small town life -- the conflict between having pride in for such a life but also the need to get out and never look back.

Weaving in the politics about patient's rights was wonderfully unpolitical in its presentation.

A potential plot point was touched on at the end which could have become another chapter that would not only have taken the book in unnecessary direction but also extended the book longer than necessary. This final plot was brought up but rightfully ended with no clear resolution. Once you get to the end of the book, you will find that you have all the resolution you need and appreciate the wisdom of Ames to end the narrative when he did.

"Buffalo Lockjaw" is a great book. I am glad I discovered it, bought it and read it.

After reading "Buffalo Lockjaw," I felt motivated to share my excitement with others. As an older reader who grew up in Buffalo, I was impressed by the ability of Greg Ames to capture the feel of my hometown. Although the world Ames portrays came a generation after mine, it is remarkable how the atmosphere he creates still rings true for me. His characters reflect a different era, but the novel still resonates for me. I think of certain barroom scenes in the story, with conversations between clients and the bartender that convey a sort of flippant intimacy that prevailed in those Elmwood-area drinking spots. These moments in the novel rekindle memories of sitting with grown-up family members, as they hung out in similar bars with the special quality that makes Elmwood Avenue a unique place to live.

Ames also has an ear for Buffalo's local language and quirky humor, with all of its peculiar twists. He uses the neighborhood lingo effectively to recreate the slice of the city he's describing. Sprinkled throughout the novel are "interviews" of fictional Buffalonians, and these sections also capture the flavor of city.

In one marvelous sentence, the narrator evokes my own adolescent outlook. "When I was a teenager, I believed that the eighteen-block strip of Elmwood from Allen to Forest was the center of the world." Here Ames reflects my personal perspective back in the early 1950s.

Finally, I should stress that the novel transcends mere "local color." The narrator's tale of his family's tragedy is beautifully told, and the complex emotional issues he confronts go far beyond verbal snapshots of the Elmwood area. Dealing with his mother's early-onset dementia, the protagonist struggles with a whole range of feelings as the story unfolds. The novel has its light moments, but Ames also explores painful questions that his troubled family must answer.

I hope he's already working on his next novel. I'm eager to read more.

The book opens with James Fitzroy visiting his mother, Ellen, on Thanksgiving, at the Elms facility in Buffalo where he grew up. He arrives from NYC in a rental car with 'Assisted Suicide For Dummies' on the back seat; eight days sober and wondering how he will handle this year's Thanksgiving. Ellen has Alzheimer's, can no longer walk on her own or talk coherently; a once vibrant woman brought down by a heinous disease. As James notes of his mother's residence in the facility; "My mother is not entirely human - not a daughter, not a mother, not a wife. Her past wiped out, she is just another sack of flesh, dehumanized. She has become a freak. Staff members put food in Ellen's mouth, strip clothes off her body, dress her and lay her in bed - she's an oversized doll, an animate toy - but she does not belong to their species any longer."

James works writing for a greeting card company in New York City, his sister Kate and her lover Allison fly in from Portland Oregon to be with Ellen also. His father Rodney is in the process of selling the old house to move into a smaller, more economical living arrangement. It's safe to say Ellen will never get better, never be coming home, and wouldn't recognize it if she did.

James is haunted by the fact that when his mother first knew of her illness, she spoke to him of suicide, of not wanting to end out like the people she had nursed her entire life. But James, adamantly against it, talks her out of it until it's too late for Ellen to make her own decision. Now he's riddled with guilt every time he sees his mother, or rather the shadow of the once vibrant woman his mother was.

Told in first person by James, the novel is interspersed with snippets of a project James had once worked on; 'An Oral History Of Buffalo', where he captured random people's thoughts on the city they were raised and lived in. While few, these snippets are extremely interesting and entertaining. Greg Ames has written a very good book, one with no answers to the problem of Alzheimer's but a deeply moving glimpse into the lives the disease effects. There's a surprise ending that fits the story well. Ames deserves Kudos for his writing skills, the book stays interesting from cover to cover, a fast and intriguing read that will move your heart and your brain, and leave you thinking. Enjoy!

I'm not convinced The City of Buffalo is unlike any other Great Lakes industrial city. As depicted in Greg Ames debut novel, BUFFALO LOCKJAW, the city is a silent snow blinded killer of motivation buried under an avalanche of lake effect storms immobilizing its citizens to content themselves with drinking in lowly bars, drugging it up at backyard winter barbecues, and holding dear to a post-pubescent childhood far into their 20s. Having lived in and around Buffalo all my life, the depiction is frighteningly accurate. Could my beloved city possibly be unique? Are things really different in Cleveland, Ohio?

Part of the fun of reading Buffalo Lockjaw is the legion of references to the city peppering nearly every page of the novel. I'm surprised and maybe a little embarassed to lay immodest claim to having patronized every drinking establishment mentioned in the book, and there are several, (what, no 'Mohawk Place'?). It's true this is the city you might find local eccentrics walking naked through a blizzard. And I was there, as cited here, during a truly harrowing Buffalo blizzard, when the late mayor Jimmy Griffin told the city to kick back in front of the TV, open up a six-pack, and wait out the storm. The national media's response was, 'only in Buffalo'. I nostalgically recognize cruising through the city-proud commercial Elmwood district late on a winter night, looking through a fogged and icy car window for a bar, a friend, or any action, as snow numbed pedestrians blindly step in front of the car as if attempting a half-hearted suicide. And when The Buffalo Bills lost the Super Bowl for the fourth consecutive time, the city cried like Niagara Falls.

In the book, James, a twenty-something New York City greeting card writer returns to his home town of Buffalo to tend to his mother who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He convinces himself that his mother, once a highly regarded nurse practitioner, would agree to end the suffering of a terminally ill patient. He plots this murder, rather capriciously, through the bulk of the novel.

I enjoyed reading Buffalo Lockjaw very much, not only for the local flavor, but for author Ames' decidedly Buffalo sense of humor and his talent for descriptive writing, especially the nearly depressing state of the mother's incarceration. Here, he has the uncanny ability to absorb the sterile and demented condition of Alzheimer patients waiting to die while letting go maybe reluctantly of their own history. I cringed reading of these once vital people returning to an infantile state of being as food dribbles from their mouths, fresh laundered clothes are soiled, and they plod aimlessly down bleak and childlike hospital corridors. Metaphor for the city itself? Yikes! But the author's choice of endings was disagreeable to me. It seemed a gimmicky effort to tie up the book neatly, when circumstances could have lingered on, very much like a Buffalo winter lasting long into the spring. The book also contains several unnecessary mini-chapters of local residents' 'Buffalo Stories', from bartenders, geeks, slackers, and so on, which while amusing, all unfortunately sound like the same narrative and is a distraction. Finally, it's difficult to determine if Buffalo Lockjaw is an elegy to the city, mother, or self. The last passage is sweet and gentle, but somehow disjointed from all that preceded it.

Far be it for this amateur book critic to claim a debut author's novel a 'good first effort'. It's more than that. But I think the book is troubled by editorial assistance insisting on a dramatic ending. Remember, Buffalo has no drama and no ending.

The jacket copy for BUFFALO LOCKJAW states, "James Fitzroy isn't doing so well." I disagree. I think James is doing damn well under the circumstances. His mother is slowly dying from Alzheimers, and at far too young an age. He's still trying to connect with his emotionally distant father, the absolute personification of that title syndrome. Because Rodney Fitzroy isn't maintaining just that proverbial stiff upper lip in the face of his wife's long slow dying, he's got the lockjaw thing down too.

Protagonist James, at 28 a part of that so-called 'slacker' generation, is perhaps a bit slow to mature like so many of his contemporaries, but at least he did manage to get out of Buffalo (out of the shadow of his over-achieving sister) and find a job. Writing verses and captions in the "Laffs" department of a greeting card company may not be the best of careers. Hell, maybe it's not a career at all, but at least he has a steady job, which is more than most of his toked-up beer-swilling Buffalo buddies can say.

But at the very heart of BUFFALO LOCKJAW is the strong love that James feels for his dying mother, who was a career nurse who loved and believed in her work. It is breaking James's heart to watch her recede into the emptiness of Alzheimers, and in his desperation and love, he studies the possibility of some kind of intervention, reading about assisted suicide and euthanasia.

The odd thing about this book is that despite such a serious and unfunny subject, Ames manages to inject a lot of humor into his first-person narrative. It is, I think, the mark of a very talented writer who can make his reader belly laugh and then nearly weep within the space of a page or two. Greg Ames is that kind of a talent, and he manages to do this repeatedly. So what do you call a book like this? Tragic? Yes. Funny? Yes again. Because this is the tale of a deep-thinking slacker, one with a heart and a soul. I guess I'll just have to call this book beautiful. I will be watching for Greg Ames's next effort. This guy can WRITE! - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir BOOKLOVER

This book covers a lot of big topics to which many people may relate, not the least of which are family, sickness and death. I found this book, unlike many that I have come across, to be less about growing up and more about having grown. I generally gravitate towards a....ah heck, I'm a sucker for a good maturation story. But this book was more about a young man who has grown up and left his old life behind and he is different now - for better or for worse. Life happens and sometimes life's path takes turns. His hometown, his life-long friends, his family - James's relationships are not the same as they once were. He has grown up and arguably apart. But there are still some very strong ties, and those ties help him deal with his sick mother, and those ties allow him to help others as well.

I really liked how Greg Ames wrote the characters in this book, and that he wrote the City of Buffalo as a character in this book, not merely the setting. It is an arguably bizarre plot, but somehow that doesn't matter. You get sucked in and you go along for the ride because you need to know how it will all play out.

I have waited a substantial amount of time after reading this book before typing my review. I had a very positive emotional response to the book. In fact, I have not recommended a book as often as this one since I read it. And I understand that there is always bias in a review, at least to a certain extent, but I wanted to try to separate myself from that emotional response and write something more cut and dry about what I liked about this book. Hopefully I was able to do that and if you give it a try, I hope you like this book as much as I did.