Suzi Sinzinnati (Contemporary American Fiction) [Paperback]

Joe Bellamy (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With highly effective deadpan humor, Bellamy's first novel relates the strenuous tussle between 18-year-old Moke Galenaille's libidinously romantic yearnings and his academic commitment as a pre-med student at Duke. In the summer of 1960, Moke returns to his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio (his parents having moved to Florida), and meets up with his high-school sweetheart, Julie, now a student at Smith. Although they have pledged eternal love, planned lives together and corresponded daily, Julie is now engaged to someone else. Swearing eternal devotion to Julie, and celibacy until she returns to him, Moke loses no time in reviving his spirits at a local striptease joint, where he instantly falls for the luscious and lubricious young belly-dancing artiste , Princess Suzi Sinzinnati, and drops her a note. Suzi and her felonious mother, Hazel, are soon Moke's parents' guests in Florida and cruising on the lavish yacht of the orotund preacher "Doctor" Elijah Roark, Moke's father's employer. If the final third of the book is a letdown, sometimes seeming labored and trite as Moke grapples with the meaning of life, and if the resolution is thin, overall this sexy romp featuring quirkily engaging and thoroughly human characters is a lighthearted diversion that is likely to disarm and cheer its readers.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

The irresistible heroine of this gently comic novel is a burlesque artist who flouts convention along with her halter tops and brings love, maybe even redemption, to Moke Galenaille, a doubtful pre-med on the rebound from romance and his father's glib promptings toward "money grubbing." An easily readable story with characters one can smile at even when one shouldn't--like the dubiously wealthy Baptist minister Elijah Roark--this novel is as much about Moke's college struggles--the usual mad dorm mates, library lust, and missed exams--as about the irrepressible Suzy. However, though it won Pushcart's Seventh Annual Editor's Book Award for a manuscript of "enduring literary value," there is little beyond Fifties nostalgia here. A sweet novel, but forgettable.
- Peter Bricklebank, City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 203 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (February 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140128557
• ISBN-13: 978-0140128550
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,477,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joe David Bellamy won the Editors' Book Award for his novel Suzi Sinzinnati, and his new novel Green Freedom is forthcoming from Narrative Library. He is also the author of fifteen other books, including Kindred Spirits, Atomic Love, Literary Luxuries, and The New Fiction. He is a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle and served as Director of the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. His essays, fiction, poetry, and reviews have been published in: The Atlantic, The Nation, Harper's, Narrative, Paris Review, Saturday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, and some seventy others. He has taught writing at several colleges and universities, including the University of Iowa.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A quick, fun read, July 31, 2000

By 

David A. Bede (Singapore) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Suzi Sinzinnati: A Novel (Hardcover)

I stumbled onto this book in an unlikely way. I work at the rare book library at Yale, and we received a shipment of Bellamy's papers - including early drafts of this book - recently which I was charged with putting in order and filing. Slipping into pleasure reading is an occupational hazard in this job, and after browsing through the first few pages of Suzi Sinzinnati, I knew I'd be picking it up next time I was on Amazon. I don't regret it! Bellamy paints a spare but unsparing picture of young love, heartbreak, disappointment...and hope. Our hero is Moke, a college sophomore around 1960 whose high school sweetheart has dumped him recently and is soon engaged to a psychologist. (Yes, it's a bit cliched, but it works...) Home in Cincinnati for a brief summer visit, he drowns his sorrow in strip joints - and promptly falls for a young dancer who lends her stage name to the book. A whirlwind adventure ensues in which the girl and her mother (also in the business) follow Moke to his parents' new home in Florida, where his father is involved in what sounds like a borderline religious cult. This is what used to be the "real" Florida, before Disney World, Jimmy Buffett and beachfront condos (though all these changes are hinted at) and Bellamy does a first rate job of evoking this lost world. In fact, Moke's coming of age often seems to be intertwined with the foreshadowing of the changes that would take the world by storm in the coming decade. The fact that the reader knows what happened next to Moke's world adds to the tension in a wonderful way. What follows is the stuff of schoolboy fantasies, just real enough to be plausible, short but sweet before Moke has to head back to school and make his peace with both his past (the lost love) and his future (medical school, and whether he really wants it). The last few chapters are truly touching, and will keep you rooting for Moke to the end. There are a number of hilarious incidents along the way, including an episode in a Cincinnati library that will elicit a knowing laugh from anyone who has ever stumbled into an opposite-sex restroom, that lighten the mood as necessary but never divert your attention completely from Moke's growing pains. Not quite a classic, but I recommend it.