Customer Reviews

Finale

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Finale is a highly amusing and frisky fast-paced sexy (sort of sexy), road trip, romp, misadventure mystery where the protagonist Jonathan Thomas backtracks through the history of his male-female relationships to an unexpected, but fully plausible, conclusion.

Toth is an accomplished writer (this is the third in a novel of Fs, the first two being Fizz and Fishnet) and brings a wide variety of talents (you need to check out his podcast series that promotes the work of various flavors of contemporary writers) and interests to his work. A relatively light and at times hilarious, but not burlesque, read in a pseudo-mystery genre (though some may say it is an outright mystery I find it to be something more hybrid and original than a pure who-done-it). In bits and pieces I was reminded of Georges Simenon, James Crumley, Jim Thompson (a hard edge Mr. Toth sometimes shows but that is appealingly not very strong here in this novel where our sympathy for Jonathan builds measure by diminutive measure), and the often imaginative quirkiness of a Carl Hiaasen (cars with stuff writ on them reminds me of cars I have driven, and abandoned). At one scene there is an obvious homage to Elmore Leonard vs. the Gideon Bible. It makes my heart thump.

Finale is a combination of plot driven, backwards it seems, and depth of character based narrative. We are brought Jonathan Thomas' characterization in a first person exploration, a style of perception that Mr. Toth brings to a fine edge between paranoid sanity, absurdity and madness. I look forward to Steve Buscemi as lead in the movie as Toth's style here reminds me very much of the laid back flow of the 1996 Trees Lounge.

My favorite part of the novel is the scene after Jonathan drinks tea with Chartrise. It reminds me so much of places I have been. Likewise, I cannot imagine driving all that distance in California, or hardly anywhere on a moped. And though I have never been to Bakersfield it is nice to be reminded why I might not be in a hurry to go there.

Highly recommended for those who like to read and who enjoy the authors I have referenced above.

Man, this has to be one of the hardest reviews that I've written in a while. It's not because the book is bad (it isn't, it's quite good). I think it may be that I'm still trying to get a grasp on this thing. It's clearly impossible to assign a genre to 'Finale'. It's a murder mystery where the action takes place before the murder (Is there even a murder in the physical sense? Read it and find out.) It's a gonzo psychosexual farce. It's a tragicomedy rolled up into a road adventure. Jiminy Christmas, it's ALL of those things and quite possibly more. It's out there on the cutting edge of modern fiction, and I appreciated the originality of the effort.

Main protagonist John Thomas has settled into a tenuous marriage when he receives a threatening note from someone who he believes to be an old flame. The note rekindles the wanderlust in his restless soul, and he takes a road trip to visit past lovers in an attempt to get to the bottom of exactly who sent the note and why. Slowly but surely, his encounters reveal his existential truths, so that all is laid bare by the end of the book.

I liked the format of the book. Traveling backwards in his history, John Thomas ratchets up the pressure on his own psyche. Short 'earthquake' chapters written in verse reveal the inner cracks taking place, until they reach a climax at the end of the book. Very nice work, and the layout gives depth to the forces at work in our (anti)-hero.

I really wish that I could go 4 1/2 stars on this one. I saw the end coming a little too quickly and felt like a couple of the characters could have used a little more depth, so it's not a perfect work. It IS pretty dang ambitious, though, and I'd love to see more from this author. 'Finale' kinda stuck with me after I read it, and that's the hallmark of an interesting story.

Recommended.

Paul A.Toths third novel Finale is a story about human self deception. Finale focuses on Jonathan Thomas who receives a threat letter that may have been sent by his ex-girlfriend. Wondering about the mysterious letter, Jonathan the character takes an absurd journey of his past while trying to escape his decent into a lack of passion and doom. An intoxicating surreal read as the reader goes backwards visiting Jonathan's past relationships of emotional demise.
I found myself laughing and crying as the character Jonathan sort of comes to an understanding of what has happened to his life and why. Climaxing at the end to ground zero when exactly appropriate.

Paul A. Toth, the Michigan-based writer of the innovative novels FIZZ and FISHNET, brings to readers his third book with a one-word title that begins with the letter "F". This time around it's FINALE, a well-crafted piece of literary marvel that begs to explode across the brainwaves of rapacious readers the world over. Simply put, if someone had to give FINALE a one-word review that begins with the letter "F", many would probably say "Formidable" because it seems numerous writers will attempt to compose a great American novel and never produce anything with as much artistic astonishment as Toth has done with FINALE.

A great romp. A unique US writer whose books you'll want to rip through again and again.

-Matthew Ward, Skive Magazine

When Jonathan Thomas receives a threatening letter, he knows it must be from an old girlfriend. But which one? So after two years of happily violent marriage, he resumes his old nomadic ways, working through seven ex-lovers in search of the one who wants to kill him. Problem is, he's such a feckless wuss that trouble seems to find him even when he's being good.

Paul Toth's strange road novel reads like a bastard child of Chuck Palahniuk and Jack Kerouac. I don't mean that in a good way. The story is disjointed, the characters flat, and nothing happens except to feed the narrator's endless pity party. Whole pages of dialog with no attribution reduce me to helpless confusion. The abrasive narrative voice reads like Toth bought a copy of "Raymond Chandler-speak for Dummies" and published his workbook exercises.

The story repeats itself ad nauseum. In each chapter John Thomas (the joke gets old) confronts an ex, then has some kind of awkward sexual encounter, then she shames him, then he does something to shame himself. This happens so many times that even the author seems to tire of it. Early chapters run to over twenty-five pages, while the last few are only five to seven pages. If even our author is bored, that doesn't bode well.

And the payoff is so obvious that the only reason John Thomas doesn't see it coming is because he doesn't know he's a character in a novel. Paul Toth apparently set out to write a novel about existential despair in post-millennial California, and I think his heart was in the right place. I just don't think his word processor came along with him.