Customer Reviews

Send Me

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Last year I read Michael Cunningham's 1995 family saga "Flesh and Blood," and was blown away by it. Little did I expect to come across a book every bit its equal so soon. Author Patrick Ryan, in a brilliant debut, has thoroughly and lovingly drawn each of his characters in a style both bold and original. Not a story collection or a novel, but rather a series of interralated vignettes, "Send Me" is an engrossing and audacious portrait of an American family.

Teresa is the matriarch of a family that consists of Matt and Katherine (her children by Dermot), and Joe and Frankie (her sons by Roy). Both men abandon Teresa and their children while remaining important characters within the continuing narratives. With dysfunction their unifying characteristic, the broken family scatters to various cities across America.

Gay inclusive, with chapters set in and around the FSU campus, Ryan beautifully illustrates a myriad of complex family dynamics and desperate personalities. The interactions between his characters seem drawn from real life, with each scene complete with its own drama and epiphany. I especially liked the chapters dealing with Frankie and Joe. These two younger brothers share a special bond that is well communicated. Theirs is the story that takes place in Tallahassee. Frankie is a genuinely special young man, eccentric, open and extreme. The final story is a gem, the final paragraphs heartrending in their purity.

The author's obvious affection for his characters, his appreciation for the absurd and his use of levity have resulted in a masterpiece of conception and execution. I can't recommend this enough.

To call this a novel is not really accurate, as it is more a collection of short stories about the members of a uniquely dysfunctional family from a suburban island in Florida. The central focus is on Teresa, the matriarch of the family who tries to hold everything together, with varying results. Her first husband, Dermot, was essentially running away from his powerful Italian-American family in upstate NY, and eventually went back to them, after the birth of Teresa's oldest children, Matt and Katherine. She then was courted and wed by Roger, who worked at the nearby NASA space center, and who became the father of Teresa's other children, Joseph and Frankie, before he leaves her for another woman.

Each chapters focus primarily on one character at a time, be it one of Teresa's two husbands or one of the children, as they grew into teenagers and adulthood. Most colorful of the latter is Frankie, a dreamer obsessed with space travel and aliens as a child, who becomes a gay party boy when attending a Florida university. His older brother Joseph is an introspective, serious boy, outwardly disapproving of Frankie's antics, but secretly envying his "I Am What I Am" bravado as he copes with his own confusion about his sexual orientation. Katherine, who ditches her name earlier and insists on being called Karen, is a teenage rebel who marries at 21, looking for the love she feels she didn't get at home. Oldest son Matt was most affected by the departure of his birth father, and moves to NY at age 18 to become his caretaker.

Although brilliantly conceived and written, the book is not that easy to follow, as the chapters don't follow logically from each other,but rather arranged in the order in which the author wanted to tell the story. They aren't in chronological order, aren't labeled as to what character is becoming the narrator of each chapter, which puts a burden on the reader that I found uncomfortable at times. My feeling is the author's disjointed, frustrating tone was intentional, to mimic the state of mind of the characters throughout. The final narrative, by Teresa, ties up loose ends and recaps what happened to each of the characters, and reinforces her role as the individual who did as good a job as possible for her family, despite the obstacles and lack of appreciation. We can also appreciate the author's originality and skill in presenting an admirable first work of fiction. Five stars out of five, including a bonus for originality and gritty realism.

I truly enjoyed this book.

Patrick Ryan uses a family as his cast, which allows him to focus on specific characters for different sections of the work. The result resembles a collection of short stories that often seem unrelated-- though they share common characters. Each chapter chooses different people to focus on, and jumps forward and back in time. In the end, the varying stories all help to illuminate the history of a remarkable family.

In particular, I felt that the chapter entitled "That Daring Young Man," was quite masterful. Not only does Ryan address the complex relationship between two brothers (one who is gay, the other also gay but closeted), but really gets at the desperation and frustration of discovering one's own sexuality. It was unlike any gay "coming-of-age" story I'd ever read-- truly unique.

A unique and thoughtful read. Highly recommended.

Ryan gets right at the heart of a painful truth: families fly apart. And by jumping back and forth in time to tell the story, the starkness of this reality is all the more clear. And what an amazing eye for detail. He's the only person other than my grandmother who would ever describe a mouthy teenage girl as "bold." When I read that, and later when I read his accurate description of a Slip n Slide, I was transported back in time. Great work.

Sometimes you look at people lives and think to yourself "I wonder what happened to you to make you turn out that way?" By that remark I am not refering to events that would be considered highly dysfunctional, just the random happenings of a somewhat messy upbringing that outwardly seem rather insignificant but inwardly wreak their own brand of havoc. This is such a story. One woman, two husbands, four children and the odd journey that makes up their lives through the 60's to present. The author has captured the feel of the time periods perfectly, any child of the "70's will instantly be transported. This is not a tidy story, in either subject matter or style. The author jumps around alot with both time periods and narratives and occasionally this style can be confusing. Nothing is wrapped up neatly, few problems are solved and the characters are by traditional standards anything but happy. In his own unapologetic way the author has simply shown a segment of the lives of these family members; he then ends the story as abruptly as he began it. 4.5 stars.

Patrick Ryan has made some bold stylistic choices in composing his first published book and to great effect. It's not a novel, but it is composed of multiple stories which all involve members of the same family. Most focus on a single character. Only three show the entire family together. So you come to know this family very intimately both as individuals and as a group which is something most traditional novels are unable to do when trying to balance diverse members of a single family. Send Me spans from the mid-60s to the near future, but each self-contained story is not arranged chronologically. Instead you hopscotch through time with this family joining them at different points in their lives which are often sadly disconnected from one another. This has the effect of juxtaposing the emotional peaks and valleys of their lives to provide greater insight into each of the characters than if you were to read about their lives from start to finish.

Here we have the wronged mother, the straying father, the rebellious daughter, the precocious boy, and the son with AIDS. All are familiar and recognizable, but none fall into stereotypes. Their life stories are fresh, compelling and unmistakeably their own. Ryan's great ability as a writer is to show real sympathy and respect for each of his complex characters. Some make very questionable choices, but the writer shows through crucial events in their lives how they came to make these decisions. These stories show that the real tragedy is not what they do, but what they fail to do. It's in their vulnerability, their tendency to neglect the family that they should try to form a tighter bond with, that their stories acquire a universal meaning. The way in which the writer chooses to tell only fragments of their stories in a carefully structured form yields many surprises making Send Me an utterly compulsive read. This eloquent, moving, fantastic puzzle of a book is the debut of a brilliant writer.

Teresa is a flawed parent; two failed marriages, four messed-up children by two fathers, each with issues that run the gamut from closeted homosexuality to alien abduction. Told chapter by chapter from the viewpoint

of main characters, a fully rounded portrait of Teresa's life is rivetingly told. This is a psychological

novel of flowing, engaging prose. Stick with it to the end for one of the most life-affirming denouements

in recent fiction.

This is one of the best most original books i have read in a long time absolutly amazing. I wish I could find the writers web address just to compliment him on an incredible first novel. The charaters are so vivid and realistic and each have there own problems, you will find yourself relating to one of them if not all of them. This story has a heart that is greater than words. It is a smart and funny story of family, love and life.

Patrick Ryan wrote this excellent book a few years ago but I think it is even more timely in today's economic crisis. After a father loses his job at Nasa, stress and humiliation drives a family to the brink. The consequences reach well into the children's adult lives. The characters could not be more lovingly portrayed even as they make mistakes in an unforgiving world. I loved this book. It transported me into its world on every page. If you want to see how job loss and crisis can tear the American dream apart, read this book.

Send Me by Patrick Ryan is the story of a family under duress. The matriarch, Teresa Kerrigan is in over her head. Her first husband leaves her with two children, a son Matt and a daughter Karen. Her second husband eventually walks out on her as well, leaving two children of his own, Joe and Frankie. The deck is stacked against Teresa as her four children spin away from her trying to find lives of their own, unable to escape the baggage of their shared past.

One thing that makes Send Me a stand out first novel and that helps save it from sinking into outright despair is that each chapter is written basically as a stand alone story. This makes it possible for novel's focus to shift from one character to another and back and forth in time creating a portrait of an American family falling apart, instead of a linear narrative of a family's collapse. Each non-chronological chapter creates a study of one character, or of the family at one point in time. One chapter tells us how things are now; the next may tell us what things were like before or long after the previous one. They all work together to create a kind of narrative tension that keeps the reader involved in the on-going story. While what happens next is not necessarily what happens next, I still wanted to know what would happen next.

In one chapter, the family heads inland away from their coastal Florida home to avoid a hurricane. Teresa and her second husband, Roy, take all four children to a run down motel where they share a single room for the night. Roy has recently lost his job with NASA and cannot afford better accommodations. There is no magical coming together under pressure in this chapter. It's soon clear to the reader that Roy is thinking about leaving his family and that his family won't miss him much once he's gone. Roy is trying, he makes every effort to be a father to his step children and to his own; he did not want to run from the hurricane in the first place but did so to please Teresa. The reader realizes that Teresa has not found what she wanted in Roy, that she may not even know what it is she wants in a husband. The children are all in the midst of one dreadful phase or another. Things go from bad to worse throughout the night until only daughter Karen walks in on her brother Matt who has gone into the shared bathroom to be alone and was in no condition to be walked in on.

The next morning, Roy sneaks out and drives back home alone while his family sleeps. I expected him to drive away and never return. That is what would probably happen in a more linear narrative. While Roy went to a house several blocks from his family's home where Leona, the woman whom he's having an affair with, lives to make sure she is okay, he did return to the hotel. This is another thing that makes Send Me work so well--we do not see the big blow-out scenes that take place in the family, the day Roy finally leaves for instance. Instead, we see one memorable day that shows us the complex family dynamic so well that we understand why Roy will eventually leave and what this will inevitably do to Teresa and her children. If we read a scene describing the day Roy left we couldn't help but take sides with either Roy or Teresa. By jumping forwards and backwards in time and by shifting the focus of the novel Mr. Ryan makes it possible for the reader to remain sympathetic with all of the novel's characters.

Roy's chapters are told in the third person, but Joe, the third child in the family, is the first person narrator of his. Joe is probably the family member most likely to succeed, to find happiness in life, but this is not at all clear in his chapter. Joe is close to his younger brother Frankie who is gay like Joe is, though their relationship is often love-hate. Frankie came out of the closet first, in spite of being younger, and came out big. Joe feels that Frankie has used all of the family's good will for coming out and made such a big splash of himself, become so flamboyant, that his own coming out would be viewed with suspicion if not just dismissed as copying Frankie. (In the end Joe is right about this.) In his chapter Joe goes to visit Frankie at college where Frankie is living the high life, staying off campus and selling drugs to support a lifestyle devoted much more to parties than to study. He is very popular and sleeps with a series of boyfriends and hook-ups. Joe sees him as so successfully gay that he cannot compete. He lives in the dorm, has no real friends, cannot bring himself to approach the one boy he is interested in. Joe will take much longer than Frankie did to come to terms with himself and to come out. He must also come to terms with a younger brother who will always be much more fabulous than he is.