Customer Reviews

Father's Day

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was going to title my review "a great summer read" but actually this book, which I thoroughly enjoyed (and didn't want it to end ..which I guess is a real compliment to the author) is a novel for all seasons --it's funny, poignant, --all those words that one uses to describe a "good read." I really couldn't put it down ... I took a peek at some of the other reviews and they have said what I want to say far better than I can ..but what I enjoyed most about this book is the author''s "voice" --- by this I mean that this book seems so personal that I felt that I amost knew the author, and his life experiences, by the time I finished it . I highly recommend this book to all....

"Father's Day" has such genuine soul and is so true in its dialogue and characters. Warm, funny and sometimes tragic - a bit like life.

So often I read a book and I think "that's nice" or "how clever". But rarely do I read a novel that resonates with me as much as this one. The relationship between Matthew and his mother is deep and complicated and mixes love, fear and mistrust in ways that ring very true for me. And Galanes' perspective on gay dating perfectly captures its potent combination of fear and desire.

PLUS, if you like Philip Roth and A.M. Homes, you won't want to miss "Father's Day".

Highly Recommended!

"Father's Day" revolves around a mother and son as they deal with the death of their husband and father. The central conflict seems to be internal to Matthew as he tries to make sense of his relationship with his father in the wake of his dad's suicide. Matthew becomes addicted to a telephone dating service that is more focused on anonymous sex than long term dating. As he works through internal conflicts with his therapist, Matthew learns that the phone service and sex clubs are only devices that he uses to shelter himself from his real issue - the lack of an emotional connection with his father (surprise, surprise). Dad seems to have suffered from depression but that's never really flushed out in the story.

Although the writing is solid and the novel short, I had a very difficult time staying interested in the characters. I forced myself to finish the book thinking that some revelatory scene in later pages would pull everything together. It never happened for me. Can't recommend this one.

Matthew Vaber, the narrator of this very fine first novel by Philip Galanes, manages a posh New York art gallery by day; in his free time he runs up telephone bills calling a gay sex line called "The Pump Line," where, when he describes himself, he slices five years off his age, and visiting a gay bathhouse. He also spends a lot of time obsessing about the recent death by suicide of his father and his relationship with his mother, along with his lack of a lasting relationship with a good man. All these topics get worked on in his weekly visits--when he keeps them--to his psychiatrist, Dr. Goldstein. Was he responsible in any way for the death of his father? Why didn't he see his suicide coming? Is his mother a lesbian? Why must he expect any man he meets to be perfect?

The time sequence goes from the present to Matthew's life as a youngster and times in between. There is a poignant account-- getting close to home-- of his being dragged to a baseball game-- when he is in the sixth or seventh grade-- by his parents and being called a "strikeout queen" by Jimmy Parker, a smelly kid who lived in a trailer park.

Sometimes Matthew can be a real pain; then you remember that he is a little or a lot like too many people you hold near and dear, and in a moment of rare self-awareness, you figure out that he sounds an awfully lot like yours truly.

This book is a quick, easy read-- certainly no requirement for a good literature-- it is very well written, has some profound thoughts as well as interesting turns of phrase. I hooted when I read that "a little a cappella flute goes a long way," having had a colleague years ago who insisted on serenading everyone who would listen with endless flute solos. If you stay in your room-- described by the author as little tombs-- at the baths rather than walk around, you are like a doggy in a window. When Sheila, Matthew's mother's friend as he says, "sees through" him, he feels both pride and gratefulness swirling together like "tasty ribbons of a Bundt cake batter," an apt image to be used by this sort of gay guy.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Here we have on the jacket cover a photograph of an expensive lemony yellow cable-knit sweater and the book is bright yellow. This yellow sweater plays prominently in one of Matthew's escapades as a young man.

The information about the author says he has a law degree from Yale. Let's hope he makes a good living as a fine writer and doesn't have to practice law. We have too few good writers and too many lawyers of any kind.

I never thought I'd be a book reviewer, but here goes: I'm not gay, I've never much thought about suicide or phone sex for that matter, and I don't think I'm neurotic, but I realy cared about all these things when I was reading this book. I felt like I was in a brand new world. My wife and I both read it, and we both cracked up a lot. It's pretty touching too. I felt really protective of the main character by the time I was through with the book, and I still think about him sometimes. I think that's partly why I'm writing the review. The guy before me bummed me out when he criticized the book for its cover, after admitting he hadn't even read it! So my review is you should read "father's day" even if you don't like the sweater on the cover. And, once you have read the book you get the brilliance of the cover...It's a really great book.

It took me a moment to catch my breath after finishing this book. I can't remember when I last laughed so hard at the tragic and was so moved by the trivial. Galanes is really successful at destabalizing the reader. It makes this book a surprising and thrilling emotional journey. I'm a straight woman and felt all Matthew's powerlessness and desperation. An excellent read.

This is the story of Matthew Vaber, whose father has committed suicide. He deeply loves his mother, who is rather unattached to everything, it seems, and they both blame themselves for the death. Matthew also finds facts about his mother's past that make him suspicious of her ability to tell the truth.

Matthew has an addiction to a phone sex line to meet anonymous lovers. Later he meets a nice guy, Henry, and almost sabotages it with his distrust. I had to pull myself through the book. The emotions seem a bit muted, the characters somewhat colorless (though not entirely), and there is certainly no uniqueness to the plot or environment. Also, Matthew's references to name-brand this and that is a very tired gay novel cliche.

I dislike being negative about a first-time fiction author, but this falls short of the mark for me. A book can be "quiet" and still be great (witness "Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier) and gay novels don't all have to be a wild sex romp or have a crazy plot. But this book was neither.

Surprising here are the remarks that it's a "great beach read" or "light, easy reading." It's not. Nor is it a highly literary read: often the dialogue falls into the trite. The author needs to focus on which scenes need to be condensed and how to drive a sharper plot, even in a book primarily about quiet emotions.

Galanes adroitly blends the elements of Matthew Vaber's life. The novel begins with a statement that Matthew's father committed suicide while he was still in college. From that point we see Matthew traipsing through the Pump Line for the perfect man. Matthew goes to the baths to have anonymous sex. He yearns to find a boy friend and when he does, he keeps testing him. His trips to see Goldstein the psychiatrist have him analyzing the doctor instead of investing into his own psyche. Matthew's relationship with his mother derives from the need to be approved and the need to defeat her.

Through these intersecting episodes we see a person emerge, fearful, nostalgic, yearning for what was lost. He describes a scene of himself at the age of six when his father wakes him up and carries him to the kitchen to plan a surprise for his mother. Matthew thinks that he'll go along with any plan as long as it involves being carried by his father. The father's suicide leaves unfinished business. It is that business that has Matthew sojourning so pathetically down dead ends.

Galanes is able to keep us interested in Matthew by hearing Matthew tell stories of himself that are at once pathetic and humorous. We see Matthew with his worts, but we empathize with him, cheering him on to self-discovery.

Father's Day is a competently written, but strangely un-involving story of family dysfunction and urban loneliness. The story opens with the main protagonist, Matthew Vaber, describing how his father shot himself in the head. He then launches into an attack on his bitter, disaffected, and self-absorbed mother who, it is gradually discovered, has had a secretive lesbian past with a childhood friend. While, living in New York working as an artists' representative, Matthew occasionally visits his psychiatrist, and seeks solace from his fear of intimacy by connecting to 555-PUMP, a phone sex service, and periodically haunting the corridors of The Downtown Club for casual, anonymous sex.

From the outset, it is obvious that Matthew has problems, not only relating to men but he also has unresolved issues with his Mother. Matthew's take on men is a mixture of the virulent with the yearning - he seems to be stuck in a repressed, withdrawn state of emotional retardation, but he also seems blurrily obsessed with finding a steady love interest. He admits that he's cornered the market on sweet and clever and funny, with more than a little handsome thrown in too, but nothing has ever worked for him. Pump Line is like "the new kid on the block," where Matthew can stalk the boundaries of his little cage in a continuous loop, around and around circling endlessly. When, however, he is brutally assaulted by an encounter gone wrong, he travels to Darien, Connecticut to visit his uncle. In a fit of indulgence, and using his uncle's phone, he again dials the Pump Line and connects with Henry, whom he hopes is a nice suburban boy.

Of course, Matthew can't keep the façade of true love up for long; he feels like a guy in chains, and soon enough he's back to his old, promiscuous ways. By effectively using flashbacks from Matthew's childhood, Galanes attempts to explain how Matthew came to be the way he is today, and he paints a picture of a family life mired in the dysfunctional, and the disparate. Father's Day is often subtle and poetic and its lively humor combined with its warm understanding of human nature, will probably appeal to many readers. Galanes does a good job of accurately capturing Matthew's youthful, bumbling viewpoint, and there is no doubt that the writing is rock-solid throughout, but for some reason, this reader rapidly lost interest in the proceedings. I read this novel over several days, but a novel of this length (only just over 210 pages) is probably better read in one sitting. Mike Leonard October 04.

This book was a great read! Full of humor and pathos. Can't wait for Galanes's next novel. I hope this one is the first of many.