Eddie's Bastard [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

William Kowalski (Author), Campbell Scott (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 1999

In this rich, deeply resonant literary debut, twenty-eight-year-old William Kowalski explores the power of family, the meaning of history, and the bonds of individuals united and shaped by love--a wondrous novel in the grand storytelling tradition of John Irving and Wally Lamb.

"Eddie's Bastard" is one William Amos Mann IV, fondly known as Billy, the illegitimate blue-eyed son of "Ready Eddie" Mann--a legendary golden athlete and brave pilot killed in Vietnam--and an unknown mother. The last in a line of proud, fiercely individualistic Irish-American men, Billy is discovered in a basket on the doorstep of the once grand farmhouse that is his ancestral family home, now a dusty, haunted mansion. The sole inhabitant is Billy's grandfather, Thomas, a bitter and lonely recluse who will raise Billy on love, fried baloney sandwiches, and the fascinating lore of the Mann family itself. While his birth may have been inauspicious, Billy's life is destined for greatness. He is a Mann, Grandpa reminds him daily, the progeny of an indomitable family scarred by success and tragedy.

Through the whisky-tinged tales of his grandfather, Billy learns how the clan's fortune was discovered by his great-great-grandfather and namesake, Willie, a hero of the Civil War, and how it was lost by Thomas himself, a veteran of World War II, in a scheme known as the Great Ostrich Fiasco of 1946. As he matures into adolescence, Billy will eventually capture these stories on paper, a tradition begun by his great-great-grandfather, who confessed his secrets in a journal he kept throughout his life.

Through the tales of his ancestors and his own experiences, Billy learns of bravery and cowardice, of life and death, of the heart's capacity for love and for unremitting hatred, eventually grasping the meaning and true beauty of family and history and their power to shape destiny.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Whoever Billy Mann's mother was, she wasn't one to mince words. "Eddie's Bastard" is the only inscription on the note taped to a picnic basket containing the infant, which is left on the doorstep of "herbalist and failed entrepreneur, Thomas Mann Junior." The depressed Mann immediately accepts that the child is the offspring of his own son, Eddie, recently killed in Vietnam, and sets out to raise him.

Grandpa had been a father in a time when men had nothing to do with the actual day-to-day business of raising children. Men didn't change diapers, warm bottles, or nurse babies. As a result, it was Grandpa's wife, and not Grandpa himself, who knew how to do all these things. Had she still been around, no doubt she would have taken over the business of raising me herself. But she--my grandmother--was no longer present to discuss it with; she'd simply disappeared one day when my father, Eddie, was still little, just after the Fiasco of the Ostriches, and Grandpa had never heard from her or of her again.

Still, Grandpa perseveres and baby Billy prospers under his unconventional care. As a child, Billy leads an isolated life--he is home-schooled, and their nearest neighbors, the Simpsons, live half a mile away and are on bad terms with Grandpa anyway. But Billy has his family history to keep him company--the Manns were once prominent and wealthy, before the ostrich débacle--not to mention the ghosts who share the Mann house and occasionally play tricks on the living inhabitants. At age 7, however, he ventures further afield than his backyard and meets Annie Simpson, a little girl with a terrible secret.

While Billy's relationships with his grandfather and his childhood friend are central to the novel, William Kowalski packs his story with lively subplots including a family curse, the identity of Billy's mother, and a legendary diary belonging to a Mann ancestor. Eddie's Bastard is a coming-of-age story that doesn't take itself too seriously. Though the standard elements of domestic drama are all here--abandonment, child abuse, alcoholism, death, and loss of innocence--whenever possible, Kowalski prefers to leaven his tragedy with a wink. Only a comedian would bankrupt a family with ostriches, after all. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In his ambitious, bittersweet first novel, Kowalski explores the world of a boy growing up in a small upstate New York town called Mannsville who must find his place in the shadows of nearly mythic ancestors. In infancy, narrator Billy Mann was left on his grandfather's doorstep, with a note identifying him only as "Eddie's bastard." Billy's bitter, proud and often drunk grandfather tells him that Eddie was a larger-than-life hero whose plane was shot down over Vietnam. Growing up, Billy is regaled with tales of other legendary Manns, whose "natural tendency toward greatness" stretches back more than a century. Yet the grandfather also paints himself as a fool who lost the family fortune with an ill-conceived idea for an ostrich farm. Billy endures a lonely, isolated childhood and adolescence, countered primarily by his rich imagination, his courage and his friendship with neighbor Annie Simpson, whose abusive, poor white trash family is the antithesis of the lineage-proud Manns. Kowalski layers the past effectively, blending the grandfather's oral history with Billy's own coming-of-age narrative. Although the vaunted Mann fortune derives from simple luckAthe discovery of blood-tainted, Civil War-era buried treasure on their propertyAthe mythic tales inspire Billy to some noble deeds of his own, and he assumes the mantle of family storyteller so the legends will endure. Though at times it veers into dramatic overload, the novel is ultimately an absorbing, redemptive exploration of a young man's search for himself, wresting an identity out of generations of secrets. Agent, Anne Hawkins of John Hawkins & Assoc. 75,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour; rights sold in Germany, England, Spain and the Netherlands; Harper audio. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: HarperAudio; Abridged edition (September 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0694522058
• ISBN-13: 978-0694522057
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,847,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The universal search for identity, January 15, 2000

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eddie's Bastard: A Novel (Hardcover)

It is difficult to believe this is a first novel. That William Kowalski is a gifted novelist is simply a given. He is a fine story teller, able to weave threads of pulsing narrative toward a nourishing conclusion. He creates characters who are not only credible but about whom we care. Too many descriptive phrases might get in the way to the individual response to this rich novel.... Suffice it to say that the title EDDIE'S BASTARD is more than a label. A Bastard is one without parents and therefore without knowledge of history - genetic, philosophical, time sequence. This beautifully crafted book reveals the detective work involved in the main character's quest for self discovery. His journey is at once interesting, touching, warm, and curative. As he reads excerpts from his great grandfather's diary - sophisticated, elegant prose set off in italics which if separated from the novel would still provide a cogent guide to knowing ourselves through understanding our history - Eddie gains insight into his place in the world, his questions about his responses to that world, and eventually an understanding about where he fits in in a world that has seemed alien.

Read this novel - for entertainment, for fresh words, for disarmingly beautiful story, and for restoration in the faith that we are a meaningful part of what was and, therefore, what will be.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a hero looking for a war, October 25, 1999

By 

Just_Karen (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Eddie's Bastard: A Novel (Hardcover)

This novel tells the tale of Billy Mann, the youngest in a long line of small town heroes. He lives with his grandfather in an idyllic state of benign neglect, learning about life through observation, imagination, and the wise words left behind by his diary-keeping, soldiering male ancestors. Not surprisingly, in the midst of all this maleness, Billy's thoughts turn to contemplation of his mysterious mother and his young neighbor, Annie. This is a coming-of-age story layered with humor, history, and heartbreak. The writing is impeccable. Kowalski's craftsmanship is an absolute joy to read.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No silver spoon in this kid's mouth, February 27, 2000

By 

T. J. Mathews (Livermore, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eddie's Bastard: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful story of a family that is far from what most would call normal, or even desirable, yet skillfully avoids the sense of depressing gloom that its subject matter could easily invoke. Billy Mann is raised by an alcoholic grandfather who is often too besotted to provide Billy with his basic physical needs yet who somehow manages to instill in him a rich appreciation of who he is and where he comes from. Kowalski often uses the name 'Mann' as a pun to point out that there is a little of Billy Mann in all of us. Hopefully, his first work is evidence of other great books to come.