From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A Hollywood screenwriter turned novelist, Haas shows a skilled literary hand in his sharp first novel about college dropout Henry Bay, who turns into something of a serial associate editor at a series of fringe magazines, beginning with a stint at one geared toward kite buggy enthusiasts. From there, Henry bounces around the country taking low-paying editing jobs at enthusiast rags with such themes as crocheting, ice climbing and conspiracy theories. The compelling side characters are central to the novel's charm. These include Gerald, Henry's talkative friend, and Henry's brother, Barney, who transforms from a science prodigy and stem cell researcher into a secretive adrenaline junkie who may be on the hit list of Freebird, a Unabomber-like domestic terrorist. Haas plunges Henry into bizarre nooks where hobbies become obsessions and subsubcultures are formed, but the characters encountered aren't dismissed as freaks; rather, they're examined with a near curatorial zeal. Though the narrative could stand to go a little deeper into Henry's motivations, overall this is a slick first novel: funny, thought provoking and a little alarming.
(June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“(An) eccentric, slyly romantic debut novel. At heart, Henry is an oddball innocent, a romantic in search of meaning that eludes him early on. (T)he book captures something at once fragile and vital --the excitement of the ordinary, the exhilaration of the everyday.” (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review )
“Funny and often moving.” (Los Angeles Times Book Review )
“Witty and endearingly patriotic.” (Christian Science Monitor (Summer Reading List Pick) )
“(THE ENTHUSIAST) isn’t just a picaresque ride through the weirder side of the magazine industry, but a super-extended coming-of-age story. And a good one, too.” (The Onion AV Club )
“THE ENTHUSIAST’s best quality: a virtual guarantee that each page will include at least one delightful and surprising turn of phrase that could have wandered in from a Frank O’Hara poem.” (San Francisco magazine )
“A charming, sly, and even wise first novel. (Haas) skillfully sketches memorable characters and places with a few pithy sentences, and his dialogue is often arch and very funny.” (Booklist )
“I am having the most wonderful day, lying on the couch and reading Charlie Haas’s brilliant book. It is wonderfully written, charming, wise, sometimes funny, always real. Henry is the perfect narrator, and the book reads like a dream.” (Anne Lamott )
“Haas shows a skilled literary hand in his sharp first novel. The compelling side characters are central to the novel’s charm…but the characters encountered aren’t dismissed as freaks; rather, they’re examined with a near curatorial zeal. This is a slick first novel: funny, thought provoking and a little alarming.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )
“I loved this novel from start to finish. It’s always funny and often profound. Again and again there are single lines that are both hilarious and saddening, that are alive both on the surface of the novel and in the depths of experience. It’s a triumph, it’s unique.” (Greil Marcus )
“As impossible to categorize as it is to put down. THE ENTHUSIAST occupies a smart, weirdly fascinating, sometimes laugh-out-loud, ever soulful universe all its own. As close to perfect as any first novel should ever be allowed to be.” (Jerry Stahl, author of
I, Fatty and
Pain Killers )
