No Room for Squares is a new American classic that celebrates the power of simplicity. This graceful novel follows the misadventures of a young investment banker turned jazz musician, and his peculiar band of friends as they search for a few bars of harmony at the turn of the 21st century. Infused with the language and culture of music, No Room for Squares explores the meaning of jazz as it relates to life outside of the boundaries of music.
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Finalist (Best Multi-Cultural Fiction): Independent Publisher Book Awards, 2005 -- Independent Publisher, May 2005
From the Author
If you're looking for me i'm knocking back 1/2-priced drinks at Happy Hour.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing,
This review is from: No Room for Squares (Paperback)
I purchased Orlando Lima's "No Room For Squares" in the hopes of discovering a new and exciting voice finally presenting jazz fiction set in the world of today and not in the music's commercial heyday. To my supreme disappointment, the novel turned out to be poorly written, banal, derivative and strangely misogynistic. Mr. Lima's protagonist (nick-named Gamble) is a jazz trumpet prodigy chafing under the pressures of a career in high finance and who, in a moment of professional crisis and literary cliche, quits his job to rehabilitate his jazz chops in New Orleans. Various love interests that occupy several subplots--include a cloying girlfriend, an exotic dancer/mystic, and a generic vamp--are nothing more than one-dimensional objects of Gamble's exploitation and derision. Love scenes are described with the poetry of a medical anatomy textbook, and the few scenes devoted to the music are shockingly perfunctory and lacking in descriptive flourish.
Lima's grasp of jazz musician culture is tenuous; the dialogue uttered by his characters bears no resemblance to jazz "slang" of this or any era. He attempts to shift the narrative from Gamble to two of his cadre of supporters, a device used to a much greater effect in "The Horn," the wonderful and highly recommended beat/jazz novel by John Clellon Holmes. For all the "research" Lima conducted on Bourbon Street, he has one of the narrators, a New Orleans drummer, communicate in a grotesque caricature of a Creole patois formed by simply replacing the terminal consonant of each word with an apostrophe. After a final string of cliches (conflict with the girlfriend, one-upsmanship of a tragically unhip classical musician), the novel comes to a merciful ending. The wait for a contemporary voice in jazz fiction continues.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Limachips Press Rocks!,
By A Customer
This review is from: No Room for Squares (Paperback)
Lima's first novel? I find that hard to believe. He writes engaging dialogue and develops interesting characters in a way writers twice as experienced can't duplicate. My one complaint is the number of copy editing mistakes. Otherwise, a great first novel. Looking forward to a lot more by this young writer.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Read,
By A Customer
This review is from: No Room for Squares (Paperback)
No Room for Squares hits on that essential question we all must encounter in life--just what we want to do with that life. But like all great books, this one doesn't worry itself about coming to any grand conclusion, no resounding summation. Instead, Lima gets down to telling a story, and he's roped a darn solid one. This is an impressive first novel, one with pace and energy that drives the story forward and through what turns out to be a highly accessible read. There are gems here packed throughout, and even though this story makes no pretensions to being some kind of life's handbook, you will certainly recognize a moment or two of life's genuine shade. You were looking for something else?
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
It was almost midnight. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, New Orleans, Too Nice, Capt'n Gamble, Capt'n Claire, Wall Street, Paul Pressey, Saint Charles, Bloody Mary, Bourbon Street, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Crescent City, Michael Jean New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
It was almost midnight. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, New Orleans, Too Nice, Capt'n Gamble, Capt'n Claire, Wall Street, Paul Pressey, Saint Charles, Bloody Mary, Bourbon Street, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Crescent City, Michael Jean New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 2
books:
- Wild Cat by Laura Black on page 135
- The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer--and Back by Katherine Russell Rich on page 20
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