Customer Reviews

The Right Man for the Job: A Novel

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The Right Man for the Job has a lot going for it. The narrative is exciting and fast-paced with an ever-present tension that Mike Magnuson skillfully modulates. White Gunnar Lund and black Dewy Bishop are two repo men trying to extract overdue furniture and appliance rental payments from mostly poor black women in Columbus, Ohio. As I followed Gunnar and Dewy's miserable exploits, I was dreading the moment when their trademark five raps on the door were answered with a gun. Extorting inflated payments, or repossessing the crap merchandise in which their employer Crown Rental traffics, is a dangerous business in the Columbus ghetto, especially for Gunnar, but also for Dewy. Gunnar worships his streetwise partner, a giant ex-football player, and Dewy enjoys taking the small-town boy from Wisconsin under his wing. He introduces him to the best fish sandwich in the hood, loads up the Crown Rental van with malt liquor, pork rinds, and cheap cigars to fuel their trips around town, and regularly dispenses repo wisdom -- the underhanded tricks of the trade. But three-quarters of the way through the novel Dewy tells 'Cheese', his nickname for Gunnar: "See, everywhere we go you gonna be the white guy. And that's cool with me. But it adds me another stress to the job, covering your white ass."

This frank pronouncement is a good example of what Magnuson does very well in his novel. He inhabits the core of white-black relations in convincing fashion, in the process articulating and exposing white neurosis regarding race. His character Gunnar is thrust into a threatening black world -- a world of hardship and misery and destructive pleasures created and maintained by the larger white society. The string of parasitic Crown Rental outlets in twenty-six cities epitomizes the rotten heart of unfettered capitalism as it feeds on the weak, who are often poor and black. A particularly pathetic repossession from a destitute new mother crystallizes the situation for Gunnar: "I see that my job, which has nothing to do with what's conspired to make this woman's life miserable, is strictly to take the little extra money this woman has, collect it, and send it on north to Canton, Ohio, where five white men use it to take vacations in the Caribbean or to spend happy Saturday afternoons in Cleveland, with their children, watching the Indians play ball." Most white writers in America would shy away from this kind of material. Magnuson is brave in his refusal to avert his gaze.

Magnuson also directs that same gaze at gender relations but I think the results are less successful. The other part of the novel involves Gunnar's deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend, the financially privileged Margaret, whom he accompanies from Wisconsin when she enrolls in graduate school at Ohio State. The two live together in a condition of mutual antagonism, until Gunnar begins pursuing another woman, one of Crown Rental's few white customers, which gives him the courage to move out. The pattern of flight to another woman, one who seems to offer new possibilities, is a recurring one, and Gunnar knows it -- but doesn't know how to break free of his own compulsions. The male side of the equation is believable, but when it comes to the motivation and psychology of Margaret, Magnuson gets into trouble. Margaret's instability needs a greater narrative foundation if it is not to seem imposed by the author, and her extreme act after Gunnar leaves feels like a male act, and not one I find particularly believable given that Margaret has a ten-year-old son. A feminist reading of the novel would undoubtedly take issue with the implication that women's studies attracts hysterical man-haters, who nevertheless are so emotionally dependent on men that they go to pieces when they're abandoned by one. A particular woman may in fact exhibit just these personality traits, but Magnuson hasn't drawn Margaret's character deeply and empathetically enough to convince me that she is this particular woman. Interestingly, the black women in the novel are more successful characters, perhaps because there are fewer veils of hypocrisy and misunderstanding in the way. A black woman loves Gunnar (for a price), and later hates him because of a foul act he commits. The lines of force are pure and simple. But that clarity and focus is probably the result of distance. When people truly live together, shades of gray are the result, rather than black and white.

A good novel, unflinching in many ways, which makes an honest attempt to engage with some of contemporary society's most charged issues -- the exact ones so many writers are careful to avoid. Magnuson does come off as a very male writer, one who isn't particularly interested in moderating his maleness or his whiteness as he explores their ramifications, but one who is willing to risk himself by venturing into difficult territory.

Mike Magnuson possesses a powerful command of language. "The Right Man for the Job" grabs the reader with its stark realism and dark, gusty prose. Gunnar Lund is decidedly an anti-hero, but the reader empathizes with him as he drags along through the sewers of life. The boldness with which racial tensions are explored as this white narrator prowls about through a mostly African-American world rates special praise. Magnuson never falters from his task of bringing us a cruel, intensely real landscape, and he never slows his pace or loses his edge. This book is a fine example of a superbly fresh writer for the new millenium.

Mike Magnuson does a wonderful job with this book. The insight he provides us in to the life of the main character, Gunnar Lund, is wonderful and vivid. Gunnar is a simple man, from a simple background, who has followed what he believes to be love to the big city. Having left his job of many years as a factory worker, the only job he is able to obtain in his new life is that of a collector and repo man for a furniture rental business. Buried by the emotional baggage of a job he hates and a somewhat mentally abusive relationship, Gunnar dreams daily of returning home to Wisconsin and the simple, comfortable life he left behind. Mr. Magnuson is a powerful writer, and does a wonderful job capturing the horrible emotional aspects of the job of a repo man, and the affects of the job on Gunnar's life. From page one to the end, when a surprising turn of events allows Gunnar the opportunity he has been hoping for, you will be riveted. Gunnar Lund is a character you will understand and relate to, and not be able to forget.

Magnuson's first effort is an incredibly fine look at racism and transplantation. The premise for it, a red-headed white guy from northern Wisconsin moves to inner Cleveland and becomes a repo man, sounds rather like the pitch for a bad sitcom, but let me tell you, buddy, sitcom this ain't.

Magnuson's writing is damn fine. It opens the reader's eyes and puts them in a world they would never expect, in the mind of a character who, while not always likable, ultimately leads the reader to a higher understanding of what redemption means.

Read it, love it, it is MAGnificent.

My wife bought me this book thinking I would like it and man was she right. Being a native of Columbus, OH I was instantly intrigued by Magnuson's intricate and dead on descriptions of areas I had found so bland and unremarkable. This novel has intense film potential (an extremely post-modern PULP FICTION of sorts) with characters more original and events twice a shocking. If you are looking for a quick, easy, entertaining read with realistic, heartfelt characters with frailties by the dozen set against the back drop of the disintegrating streets of a US state capitol, pick it up. You won't be disappointed. Magnuson is a powerful voice from the Midwest.

Magnuson captures the essence of the streets of many crumbling Midwest cities well. He also presents the main character as a man who trancends poverty and unhappy relationships. Overall, this is worth reading, if not for an example of really quality modern literature, then for a good narrative on the plight of being poor, lonely and trapped in somewhere like Columbus (which, to be fair, has one or two nice parts).
Now a book about Dayton, that would be really depressing. Note: Only saying this because I lived there for five years.

In today's star-struck society, it's a welcome respite to read a novel about two average guys working an average job. Magnuson does a great job portraying what life can be like in the oft-forgotten blue-collar section of society. This novel's best attribute, with all credit to Magnuson, is its common-folk, everyday, REAL use of language. That rarely happens in today's "form novels." Magnuson is, and will remain, one of my favorite authors.

I just got through reading "The Right Man for the Job". I really enjoyed the book. It is right on the money in its descriptions of "the hood" and those that inhabit it. It is a good read. Good luck to the author on his next book. May it be as good as the first.

The Right Man For The Job explores the dark side of blue collar working America through the eyes of an out of place repo-man who has hit rock bottom. Mike Magnuson delivers a story with a style that is so hard hitting and brutal that it leaves you hurting. An excellent first novel.

While the working class tone of this first novel is believable and its portrait of Columbus, Ohio's forlorn, behind-on-rent neighborhoods are well-drawn, I have to say that I found the friendship between main characters Gunnar and Dewy a bit strained and youngish in its delivery. Even less convincing was the relationship between Gunnar and his psychotic girlfriend Margaret. In the end, this book reads a lot like a work of fiction that may well be based on a good many real and/or autobiographical events that, paradoxically, are less than believable in the telling. On the upside, this being a first novel, it is interesting to read "The Right Man for the Job" with an eye toward a how a younger writer works through tricky and powerful subjects - emasculation, race differences, and the pain of the underclass are all themes that are explored in this novel. Despite my criticisms of his writing - a bit blocky here and there, a bit too simple at times - there is something profound at work here in Magnuson's attempts to give voice to a largely marginal character trying as best he can to do better in a difficult world.