The Scoundrel [Paperback]

Stephen Jaramillo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1999

He's "hilarious" (Details), "over-the-top" (New York Times Book Review), and "enormously entertaining" (St. Petersburg Times)... Now the author of Going Postal is going crazy--for love.

Carl Carrasco has decided to devote his life to women. No strings attached. And, being an employed heterosexual man in the Bay Area, he's hitting the dating scene with a vengeance. There's a hot-and-cold running Russian named Anastasia...a naughty night-shifter known as "Nurse!"...Jane, the blue-collar bisexual bartendress...and Maria Cordova, the cybersex-kitten who claims to be the hottest e-mail female on the Net.

But Carl's year of living dangerously isn't all it's cracked up to be. Why? Because he's haunted by The Girl he loved. The Girl who hurt him. The Girl he can't forget...And She must be erased from his mind forever. With sex. (That's the plan, at least. )

"A crisp and funny style, a dead-on ear for dialogue, but more impressive, an emotional honesty that's rare and wonderful." -Rocky Mountain News

--Jaramillo's sexiest and funniest novel to date, The Scoundrel is to men what Laura Zigman's Animal Husbandry was to women-a hilarious report from the trenches of the battle between the sexes

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Romantic rehabilitation and sexual frustration find a tireless chronicler east of the San Francisco Bay in Carl Carrasco, an Oakland chef and candid, hopelessly horny protagonist/narrator of this raunchy yarn from Jaramillo (Going Postal, Chocolate Jesus). Unable to get over the girl he loved and lost (after five years together), Carl sets out to become the scoundrel of the book's title and to numb his pain with large doses of uncomplicated sex. This turns out to be a more perilous quest than he imagined. Carl has high expectations for his one-night stands: he likes highly literate women who love old movies, and they must be the perfect combination of drop-dead gorgeous, sex-crazed and not clingy or emotionally demanding. He finds quite a variety of this exact kind of lady to pursue and conquer, or to be rejected by. He even finds one he actually likes a lot. So while his best friend sends e-mail from Prague reporting his numerous sexual conquests overseas, Carl may stumble his way right into another serious relationship/entanglement if he's not careful. Jaramillo convincingly evokes this loser in love in a self-mocking, scandalously frank first person: "I felt about marriage the way many girlfriends have felt about anal sexAit's kind of intriguing, but just a little too scary. Could pleasure really be realized through that route?" Like a real-life friend with chronic romantic woes, Carl's one-track mind becomes a bit tiresome and his rants verge on whiny, but Jaramillo's irreverent wit and a few good cooking tips compensate.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A rambling fantasy of misdirected youth, by a novelist whose previous work (Going Postal, 1997) only hinted at the wild man persona hes now wrapped himself in fully. Like many young men, Carl Carrasco enjoys frequent sex with as many different women as he can lay his hands on. Unlike most, however, hes confident that his experiences will be as amusing to others as they are to him. Although a libertine, Carl is not a slacker: He found respectable employment as a delivery boy for an Italian restaurant in San Francisco and has worked his way up to chef, pursuing women only in free time. Theres the Russian intellectual named Anastasia, who finds him appealing in his hopelessly lowbrow style but cant put up with his ignorance of philosophy and the world. Maria Cordova is a Bay Area surfer chick (on the Internet, that is) who carries on a chat-room affair with him. Some years ago, there was a night-shift nurse who also makes a regular appearance in his fantasy life, and theres a bisexual barmaid at the restaurant who, he hopes, will hook him on to a hot threesome. For the most part, however, Carls thoughts revolve around the North County Girl (his current squeeze) and his ex-girlfriend (whom he never really got over). His friend Mike, now in Prague, sends him regular e-mails regaling him with his awesome exploits among the Czech babes, who are gorgeous and love sex and have never heard of feminism or AIDS or other such turnoffs. But just as things seem to be getting serious with the North County Girl, Carls restaurant goes out of business. Will he, being free and unemployed, go join Mike in his frat-house Nirvana? Or will he just grow up? Well have to wait for Jaramillos next installment to know for sure, but the indications are pretty clear. A good read for the flight down to Fort Lauderdale, though it probably wont have a long shelf life after Spring Break. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 042516859X
• ISBN-13: 978-0425168592
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,481,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unreadable, October 3, 2000

By 

"ahmadku" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Scoundrel (Paperback)

This book had an interesting premise, which is that of a man who attempts to forget his lost love by engaging in a series of affairs. However, the story is quite boring and none of the characters are particularly likable. It reads more like a collection of bad short stories rather than a coherent, unified novel. Pass on this one.

5.0 out of 5 stars Most Funny, October 27, 2001

By 

Athena L. McDevitt (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Scoundrel (Paperback)

I find this book to be extremely funny. I enjoyed his book "Going Postal" a great book, but liked this book a bit better. I find his view of the world so refreshing, I am sitting on pins and needles waiting for his next book.

1.0 out of 5 stars what a waste of time, March 31, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Scoundrel (Paperback)

I had high hopes when I purchased this book. Going Postal was wonderful, and I thought that this book would be good as well. This book was so boring, trite, and badly written. I wouldn't recommend it to my enemies.