Amazon.com Review
In
Goats, first novelist Mark Jude Poirier brings us an oddly compelling story of two men, one a teenager, the other about 40, both committed adolescents. Fourteen-year-old Ellis lives with his mom in suburban Tucson, Arizona. Goat Man is, for lack of a better definition, their pool man. He takes care of the pool and the garden, and "in exchange, Ellis's languid mother Wendy gave him food, the pool house, and a meager salary. She also provided him with a place to keep his goats." When he's not caring for his herd, Goat Man spends his off hours growing pot and getting high. And every so often, he heads into the desert for a trek with the goats, walking at night in the cool dark. In many of these pursuits--especially the getting high part--he is joined by the confident, easygoing Ellis. This apprenticeship is interrupted only when Ellis heads off to Gates Academy, the Pennsylvania prep school attended by his absentee father. The novel then follows him as he journeys from his unconventional home into the real world.
There are plenty of reasons Goats shouldn't work. For one thing, Ellis is a strangely perfect protagonist. He's good at everything, smart, responsible, too cool for school. Also, the central mystery of Goat Man--how he became Goat Man--remains unsolved. Meanwhile, most of the other characters are one-dimensional: Ellis's slobby roommate at Gates, his spacey mom, his hardliner crew coach. Yet the author has been savvy in choosing his material. The familiar rigors of prep school make a fine foil for the evocative descriptions of Ellis's desert treks. Poirier also cleverly inverts the coming-of-age formula--rather than encountering a strange new world, his tender protagonist emerges into a merely normal one. Most important, Poirier never judges his characters. Ellis doesn't become better than Goat Man or his mother; he simply discovers that he has options besides smoking pot in the pool house, which gives an upbeat twist to this charming and assured debut. --Claire Dederer
From Publishers Weekly
Short story writer (Naked Pueblo) Poirier's oddball first novel brings together an assortment of good-natured druggies, New Age caricatures, feuding divorc?es and human-like goats. The protagonist of this meandering but ingratiating rites-of-passage tale is Ellis Whitman, an articulate, hyperintelligent 14-year-old with a marked affinity for recreational drug use. Raised in Tucson, Ariz., by his flighty, fad-crazed mother, Wendy, and her perennially high "domestic help," a laid-back marijuana enthusiast called Goat Man, Ellis faces the first major challenge of his heretofore pampered life when he's sent off to Gates, an exclusive Pennsylvania boarding school. Since Ellis has spent most of his youthful existence toking up and spacing out with Goat Man (who functions as something of a surrogate father and ganja-addled guru for him), life at a rigid, elitist East Coast prep school like Gates initially leads to some culture shock. Fortunately, Ellis is nothing if not adaptable, and he takes to his new environment, befriending his doltish roommate Barney; developing a crush on Minnie, a pretty dining-hall server; and excelling in practically every class that he attends. Poirier intercuts deftly observed scenes of Ellis's day-to-day life at Gates with some offbeat interludes, in which we watch the sage but stoned Goat Man interact with the childish, easily manipulated Wendy and her parasitic boyfriend, Bennet. Goat Man's occasional treks through the wilderness with his pet goatsAFrieda, Lance, Gigi and Mr. T.Aalso allow Poirier to pontificate, a little clumsily, on the latent humanity present in brute animals and vice versa. Such awkward lapses are infrequent, however. With its low-key humor and idiosyncratic views on family, drug use and the modern American caste system, this is an engaging and perceptive debut. The book's shimmering, golden cover is an eye-catcher. 4-city regional author tour. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
