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The Sweep of the Second Hand
 
 
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The Sweep of the Second Hand [Hardcover]

Dean Monti (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

Price: $23.95 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
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Book Description

July 2001
In this hilarious first novel, Malcolm, our protagonist, has a lot of problems: his ex-girlfriend, Lena, won’t give him back his watch; the small art movie theatre he runs isn’t doing well; it’s hot and sticky and his apartment isn’t air-conditioned; he can’t sleep because he thinks he’s losing a minute of sleep each night—and what’s more, a host of yellow jackets are living in his wall.

As if all this wasn’t enough, Lena is about to marry a successful cardiologist. Couldn’t she at least give him his watch back?

While he devises several schemes to retrieve his timepiece, Malcolm becomes involved with other women. There’s Anne, the crisis hotline volunteer who persists in regarding him as someone who needs help rather than someone to date; and Darlene, who sings post-punk dirges and ballads with a group called the Circadian Rhythm Section.

Still trying to woo Anne, he plans to launch an ambitious film festival at his Arcadia Filmhaus to impress her, making Wild Strawberries the centerpiece of the event, which will also feature a guest speaker—a Swedish actor who claims to have worked with Ingmar Bergman in the ’50s.

Meanwhile, Malcolm works out a bizarre plot in which he finds himself in attendance at Lena’s wedding. In the ensuing disaster—both with the film festival and the watch project—he has a final showdown with the yellow jackets in his wall and tries to decide at last What It’s All About.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drolly humorous and gently paced, The Sweep of the Second Hand, by first-timer Dean Monti, tracks the uneventful life of Malcolm Cicchio, manager of a sleepy foreign film theater. All is not well with Malcolm: he can't sleep at night, yellow jackets are nesting in his apartment and his ex-girlfriend Lena is marrying a doctor. A postpunk dirge singer named Darlene and a hot-line volunteer try to get him back on track, but they may end up hindering more than they help. Sweet, slow and slightly bizarre, this is an intriguing debut.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this comic debut, Malcolm Cicchio loses one minute of sleep with each passing night; at that rate, he figures that his heart will explode in 16 months. The manager of a failing art film theater, he has recently split up with Lena, his girlfriend of seven years, who is set to marry a successful cardiologist. He feels that he might as well have loser tattooed on his forehead. And then the babes seemingly start falling from the sky. First he meets Anne, who answers the phone at an emergency switchboard and admits that her favorite movie is Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries. This is reason enough to schedule a two-day film festival, to which he invites Soren Sonderby, a Swedish actor who claims to have had the limp-on part of a leper in Bergman's Seventh Seal. Then there's Darlene, the singer with the Circadian Rhythm Section, who wrangles an invitation to play Lena's wedding the same weekend as the film festival with Malcolm in tow. That string of days serves as the book's culmination when everything may or may not come together for Malcolm in the middle. A comic novel all too often can be little more than a string of gags, but Monti begs comparison with Woody Allen and Nick Hornby (High Fidelity). More, please. For all larger public libraries. Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 327 pages
  • Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers (July 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0897334906
  • ISBN-13: 978-0897334907
  • Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,377,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Gem of a Book, July 29, 2001
By 
Bonnie Shimko (Plattsburgh, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Sweep of the Second Hand (Hardcover)
Dean Monti's The Sweep of the Second Hand is hilarious. If you enjoy laughing and if you like well-paced novels with vivid, quirky characters, you'll love this book. It's like that dish of peanuts on the coffee table - you can't leave them alone until they're all gone, and then you wish there were more. I hope that Mr. Monti is typing as fast as he can on his next book. I'm looking forward to a second helping.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, a different type of page turner, July 27, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Sweep of the Second Hand (Hardcover)
This is an excellent book. I loved reading about Malcom's daily encounters and how he deals with his inability to sleep. This is a definite page turner because you want to find out if Malcom ever gets to sleep, find his watch, or figure out what to do with the women in his life. Monti has done an excellent job with this book and I hope that he continues to write more.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Very funny and sweet story, February 28, 2006
This review is from: The Sweep of the Second Hand (Hardcover)
The humor in The Sweep of the Second Hand builds from the first page. Author Dean Monti carefully develops the character of Malcolm, a sweet progressive insomniac who manages a small Chicago art theater with a stunning lack of pretense. Malcolm pragmatically and sleepily stumbles through his existence waiting for life to happen to him, which it does in laugh-out-loud events with a variety of women. Monti's treatment of each of these supporting characters is spot-on as well. Men will especially enjoy Malcolm's outlook, body functions, and the ultimate meaning of life as he finds it. The story would make a fantastic guy movie, by the way--a studio should snap it up. I highly recommend The Sweep of the Second Hand to all.
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First Sentence:
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
shopping caddy, dirge singer, smut house, cheese wheel, cool suits, second land, big suit, projection booth, cheese knife, yellow jackets
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Missus Calabrone, Soren Sonderby, Arcadia Filmhaus, Quality Nook, Kristen Anne, Circadian Rhythm Section, Darlene Bleeker, Doctor Villard, Mister Sonderby, Soiled Sheets, Dave Zenk, Doctor Andrew Buntrock, Punishing Skulls, Ben Gay, Fourth of July, Betty Grable, Missus Karponski, Mister Agnew, Ricardo Pisces, Springer Spaniel, Tony Riccarelli, United States, Fruitie Kazooties, Ingrid Thulin, Toshiro Mifune
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