Customer Reviews

The Rough English Equivalent

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a case of bottom english! Ex-Abwehr agent steals millions, has his postwar flight to Cuba interrupted when his Buick limo breaks down in cracker country. Porque? Why, for the oldest reason in the chronicles of humankind; a fine, fine woman who's grossly misunderstood, and, naturally, underappreciated.

I'm convinced that Mr. Hayes either grew up in a town like Bisque, or drank a lot with someone who did. His place descriptions, characterizations and ear for dialect are just too spot-on for this reviewer to believe otherwise.

Bring it on, Stan; we need more of Bisque and Hamm County, which bids fair to be appreciated as nothing less than Yoknapatawpha East!

This story has quite a few memorable characters, not the least of whom is Flx the Goshawk. Befriending Jack on the first day that he's separated from his Father, he remains his supernatural sounding board- or is he an alter ego?... throughout the years of his growing up. On whichever side of this question you may decide to come down, I'll bet that you end up wishing that you'd had a Flx of your own to guide you through the pitfalls of growing up, to say nothing of the mentoring of a resourceful ex-Nazi spy!

Hayes doesn't exactly hit you over the head with his message, as DeLillo or Pynchon are wont to do, but it comes through loud and clear if you look closely at what this blockbuster-sized book has to say. To wit, sex is a deadly sort of fun, God is a fig newton of far too many people's imaginations, and life's too short to pussyfoot around. I write this having just reread The Rough English Equivalent's 600+ pages to make sure that I'd really "gotten it," and it was so much fun that I'll probably do it again before the summer's out. As a woman, I found myself applauding Rini's independence and wishing that I were as tough as Diana, the kick-ass psychic nympho twin. And if you're a pilot, as I am, you'll get a kick out of flying the J-3 Cub and the old Grumman F3F fighter with Jack, Moses and Gene Debs!

This is, excuse my French, a hell of a book; to that point, I can't give it five stars because I'm at odds with Mr. Hayes' atheistic subtext. I suppose that's akin to a feminist downing the cromagnon philosophy of John Wayne, which I do, and still admiring his Sgt. Stryker of Sands of Iwo Jima, which one must. If I could, I'd give the book 4 1/2 stars, but since I can't, it gets a very enthusiastic FOUR!

Having chanced across this book's web site during a Google search, I bought it on the strength of Thomas Mcguane's endorsement. His off-center humor's been a longtime addiction of mine, and I figured that if he got "hours of amusement" from it, so would I. Well, I didn't know what I was getting myself into; this guy Hayes' mind certainly shares a quirk or two with McGuane's, but they definitely feed in different pastures. The Rough English Equivalent shares tones of alienation and rebellion with McGuane's work, especially the early books, but its humor's at once darker and more hopeful than the wide-open-space bleakness of which McGuane is the master. This novel, which I think is Hayes's first, has a decidedly urban cast, with airplanes and motorcycles serving in the roles of McGuane's beloved horseflesh.

Enough comparisons; what we have here is a bordering-on-black comedy set in post-World War II Bisque, Georgia, hard by the Savannah River Project plutonium plant. The Rough English Equivalent spans a decade in the lives of Serena, the striking, sensual, estranged wife of Manhattan Project scientist and a Bisque bigwig's daughter, who's itching to trade motherhood and the live-in management of her father's hotel for a sculptor's loft in New York. Jack, her ferociously apt son, puberty just around the corner, is shadowed by a Goshawk that only he can see. Having only sporadic contact with his father, he grows up in Hotel Bisque under the iconoclastic tutelage of burly Jewish entrepreneur Moses, who's actually Peter, a onetime Luftwaffe pilot, late of German intelligence, who sat out the war in Baltimore after walking away with three million bucks earmarked for Roosevelt's and Churchill's 1941 IRA assassination aboard USS Augusta. Stranded en route to Cuba by a ruptured radiator, he gets a load of Serena and drops anchor.

As they craft a modus viviendi, these characters smite Bisque's small-town sensibilities hip and thigh, careening down a collision course with destiny. Probing their psyches and the circumstances that shaped them, Hayes cracks the citadel of Bisque's bigoted bourgeoisie, delivering episodes that include Moses adjourning a Klan cross-burning with bazooka fire, Serena swapping his 1950 Buick's hood ornament for a replica sporting a slickly-chromed penis modeled by the sculptor from life, Jack seduced at 16 by Moses' old lover's daughter aboard a sailboat in New York Harbor and, last but not least, the Bishop sisters, psychic twins possessed by Tourette Syndrome and nymphomania, using Moses' old white limousine to stalk him, driving him nuts with implications that they know who he really is.

Increasingly restless in his Bisque sojourn, Moses fakes his death in a plane crash off the Georgia coast, goes to Havana, and all too soon joins his old Mafia cronies in flight from the Castro revolution. Jack and Moses reunite in Miami's Coconut Grove, awash in CIA types and Cuban exiles, notably Howard Hunt and Bernard Barker, gearing up for the Bay of Pigs.

This is a rich, rich piece of work. The web site quotes a reviewer as saying that it's a cross between John Irving and Louis Grizzard, and I guess I could agree with that. I could also go on, but recalling McGuane's verdict that The Rough English Equivalent's "...funny and wonderfully energetic," I'll close this out by telling you just one more thing. It's an Altman movie screaming to be made!

Hope to see more from Stan Hayes; this is truly sophisticated, sexy, Southern-fried fun, with a sneaky aftertaste of spookery. What's with dat bird, man?

Anyway, I played ball at an SEC school, and the episode about the Sugar Bowl tickets reminded me of my red-shirt days and strgglin' to make ends meet. Trouble is, I had no playmate remotely like Maybelle of the Red Austin-Healey! Way to go, Hayes; now sex on a hotel roof's on my checklist of things to do before I die. Yeah, THAT kind of sex!

This a wonderful story with finely drawn characters (although I disagree with other reviewers on the bird) with lots of style, wit, and panache. The descriptions of post-war rural Southern life are full of life and light, the characters jump out of the page and are people that you wish you could meet, and the narrative just keeps on revealing more about everyone's lives. Hayes has a winning novel here that will draw you in and satisfy many readers.

There's no other word- hilarious! Cross John Irving with Lewis Grizzard (if you dare), whisk in a touch of John LeCarré, and you have Stan Hayes' Rabelaisian The Rough English Equivalent. This is over-the-top black comedy, tracking an ex-intelligence agent and his raffish retinue from Berlin to Tobacco Road, Havana and Miami. It is, without a doubt, the funniest NON-affirmation of faith I ever hope to read. Thumbing its nose at every known convention, Stan Hayes draws readers quickly into his characters' riotous lives, inviting them to question promises of eternal rewards for irrational behavior, sharpen their sense of the absurd and get their sides seriously split in the bargain.

In 1946, a strapping, steely-eyed New Yorker punctures Bisque (BIS-kew), Georgia's self-satisfied small-town stupor. Cuba-bound Moses Kubielski's steaming Buick limousine has stranded him there, and nine-year-old Jack Mason escorts the exotic stranger to Hotel Bisque, introducing him to his mother Serena, the manager. Poleaxed by desire, Moses pursues her in the Yankee manner, buying the town movie house on the spot, hammering around in a glittering Harley-Davidson sidecar rig to promote it and in general serving notice that, for him, the town's "old ways" are just that. Committed to returning to New York and succeeding as a sculptor, Serena deflects Moses' marriage proposal, and passion gives way to sex-sprinkled friendship.

Acquiring the Hamm County Beverage Company with Serena's father, Moses settles onto the fringe of Bisque's bourgeoisie. Gradually assuming a pivotal role in Jack's life, he shows him, time and again, how a finger is stuck in the eye of the establishment. But the unexpected appearance of an old comrade, and tightening security around the plutonium-spawning Savannah River Project, threaten to reveal his past. Moses reacts, dusting off his espionage skills to insure that the fruits of his Bisque burghership are secured for the boy. And Jack, not yet twenty, joins his role model and a wartime colleague/KGB agent in the commission of a crime that promises to make him rich.

Hayes slices and dices small-town shibboleths left and right as he traces Jack's course from boyhood to his early twenties. And by the way; you'll never look at a Buick in the same way again!

Born and raised in "Bisque", I knew and admired the author,who was a high school senior at the time I was in jr high. I recognized a lot of the places, people, and situations. Anyone from our hometown will also. I'm enjoying the hell out of it! It's a history of the time I was growing up also, but at the same time it's a log of America changing from the pre-and post-WW II times. Can't wait to finish it, so I can begin the further adventures of Jack Mason! I hope there's a third installment in the making. I heartily recommend this one!

I also grew up in small town(s)and love to revisit them in the written word. Compelling,riveting and fun story .