The Ordinary White Boy [Hardcover]

Brock Clarke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 2001

Endearing, infuriating, and utterly irresistible, Lamar Kerry is a twenty-seven-year-old Ordinary White Boy. He wears khaki pants, work boots, and flannel shirts; dances like Mick Jagger when he dances at all (only when drunk); and when in doubt, he reaches for a beer. His father sent him to college expecting him to become extraordinary, but Lamar returned home a bright, cocky, over-educated, middle-class boy adrift in a depressed, comatose, working-class town.
Now the town's only Hispanic is missing and feared dead, Lamar's mother is enfeebled by MS, and both his girlfriend and his father are tired of being disappointed in him. Can Lamar turn himself into a professor of "racist remediation" and save the soul of his town? Can he stop hiding out in his ordinariness and do what is right by his father, his mother, his girlfriend, and himself? Can this ordinary white boy finally become a man?
With a character both unforgettably unique yet universal, in a voice both tender and biting, Clarke mixes subtle social criticism with laugh-out-loud funny observations and introduces to literature the ordinary white boy in all of us.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Brock Clarke's debut novel, The Ordinary White Boy, is a familiar story of a young man finding comfort with himself amidst an average life of work, relationships, and occasional hardships. Lamar Carney, in his khaki pants and flannel shirts, lets life happen to him, always saying he would rather be doing nothing than something.

The truth is that I don't want to be special... Being special can make you think that you are something you're not: it can make you believe, say, that you live in a city when in reality you live in a shrinking little mill town. Being special can also make you believe that you're too important to go out and cover emergency school-board meetings for forty dollars a pop, plus mileage.

Throughout most of the novel, Lamar questions conventional society, even though he is destined to conform to it. Still, Clarke has done wonders subtly producing a special sort of character, even though Lamar might claim otherwise. A refreshing, casual read. --Yvonne Schindler

From Publishers Weekly

This first novel has a familiar protagonist and setting: a bright youth trying to come to terms with life in a depressed and depressing little town in upstate New York. Clarke is no Richard Russo or Russell Banks, however, both of whom have done comic and poignant wonders with similar material. Twenty-seven-year-old Lamar Kerry is still living at home in Little Falls, a mile from his weak-kneed newspaper editor father and his multiple sclerosis-afflicted mother. His girlfriend, Glori, works as a school secretary; his best friend, Andrew, is planning, rather nervously, to become a prison guard at the new jail (at least the pay is good), and Lamar hangs around his father's newspaper office doing odd reporting jobs. The community is nonplussed when jeweler Mark Ramirez, the only Latino in town, goes missing and racial motives are suspected. For a time it looks as if this may stir Lamar into action, but when he interviews community members about their reactions to the crime, he realizes that he is as myopic as they are, and he proves hopelessly inept when Ramirez's wife reaches out to him for help. In the end Lamar does nothing much. He and Glori fumble along in their relationship; he and Andrew go on a drunken, self-destructive road trip. The mystery of the murder is solved in a way that absolves the town from its racism. And Lamar plans to go on hiding his head in the sand. This rather dull tale could have been redeemed by a genuinely comic vision, or some lively characterizations, but Clarke's style (which tends towards ending chapters with lines like "So that's what I do.") is as flat as life in Little Falls. Despite his would-be wise-guy perceptions and underlying decency, Lamar kindles few sparks. National advertising; 9-city East Coast author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 257 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (September 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151008108
• ISBN-13: 978-0151008100
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,594,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Judging a Book by its Cover, March 21, 2002

By 

Keja L. Beeson (Brawley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ordinary White Boy (Hardcover)

Bonnie puts all the Advance Reader Copies out on a table in her independent bookstore. They're there for us to take if we want; she could never read them all. I browsed these books recently, reading titles, author's names, and wondering about the artwork. This one has the guy snoozing on the red couch. The Ordinary White Boy? Sounded interesting, looked interesting. So, I took it.

Turns out it was interesting. I love Lamar, the self proclaimed ordinary white boy. What's great about him is that he is coming to terms with who he is and the choices he's made in his life. I felt like I should read with a highlighter pen and mark up the passages of self discovery so I could pass it on to friends and say, check out this passage. But I might as well photocopy the book to yellow paper. It's full of discovery and I want my friends to read every page.

It occurs to me that "discovery" is a heavy word. This novel is everything but heavy. Short chapters, snappy dialogue, and insightful monologue made this book fun to read. The fact that I walked away, much as Lamar does, with a little more clarity about ordinary white boys is just bonus.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional., September 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ordinary White Boy (Hardcover)

Brilliant. A well written debut from an author who is so completely comfortable with his prose that the main character dances in your thoughts long after you've put down the novel. Be prepared, this is by no means a quick read... it is instead, a wealth a detailed wit and controversy which will open your eyes and furrow your brow in the same chapter. To the reader enjoy this book... put up your feet... curl up with your blanket... energize your book club... and to the author... well done.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the years best books, September 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ordinary White Boy (Hardcover)

A hilarious, yet introspective, tale that takes the reader to places familiar and foriegn, whilst making the reader both think about things we've often dwelled upon as well as things we never imagined imagining. Laugh-out-loud funny. There is a little Lamar in all of us, whether we're proud to admit it or not.