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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Derby's in a rowboat. It's night.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies: A Novel (Paperback)
Imagine a very depressed Damon Runyan. De Haven's story works best as an Oedipal love-hate story between narrator Al Br[e]ady, funny-page ghostwriter par excellence, and cartoonist Walter Geebus, a misanthrope who has long since run out of ideas but whose drawings remain one of the few things in Bready's world to believe in. Less engaging is Bready's unrequited--well, unconsummated anyway--love for Jewel, who is married to a real-life cartoon dimwit. That relationship is bittersweet, as is the narrator's love for his damaged sister, the unwilling keeper of the family secret that Bready can't admit. But it's Geebus who breathes life into the novel and into Bready--Geebus: selfish, manipulative, but capable of a sweet belated response to a young letter writer who idolized him as a boy but has since accreted layer upon layer of cynicism.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful, touching, funny story,
By
This review is from: Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies: A Novel (Paperback)
The complex relationship between the two main characters, with its friendship, love, jealousy, and competitiveness, is beautifully constructed, but the story never get tedious or maudlin. The novel has many comic moments and a few heartbreaking moments. Mr. De Haven's ending ties up all the threads in the story so deftly that it left my head spinning. A very impressive book.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not as successful as Funny Papers,
By Stu Shiffman (roscoe@halcyon.com) (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies: A Novel (Paperback)
I enjoyed Tom De Haven's Derby Dugan, but not to the same extent as his Funny Papers. There is more of a dark cloud over the characters in this novel. Yet, although he's no Runyon or P.G. Wodehouse, De Haven creates living characters that you don't mind spending time with.
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