The Year of the Zinc Penny: A Novel [Paperback]

Rick DeMarinis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 2004

Now in paperback, The Year of the Zinc Penny is a contemporary classic. Trygve Soren Napoli is a ten-year-old just beginning to realize that he is alone in the world. Certain inescapable quirks tip him off: He cannot stop himself from repeating aloud each of his sentences, even after his stepfather tapes his mouth shut. Strange black hairs grow from the back of his hand. He has a weird name, unlike the other kids in Los Angeles, his new home. Even the cousin he looks up to calls him crazy. He doesn’t have a father, but then the country is in the middle of the biggest war ever, and a lot of kids are missing dads. His uncle drinks, and Trygve sees him hit Aunt Ginger, but then it was his uncle who gave him the roll of zinc pennies—and Uncle Gerald is the one who somehow manages to lay hand on the valuable copper wire needed to build an antenna for Trygve’s shortwave radio, the boy’s one sure link to the external world.
The Year of the Zinc Penny is a masterful rendering of a young consciousness. From his war-hero daydreams, to his obsession with Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, to his first encounters with sex and violence, to his disgust and fear at the depravity of the hodgepodge adults in his life,Trygve’s search for meaning is one of contemporary literature’s most compelling.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

DeMarinis ( The Coming Triumph of the Free World ; Heinz Prize-winner Under the Wheat ) has produced a masterpiece in this bittersweet coming-of-age story that re-defines the genre with the best of them. While neither as gritty as Earl Thompson's A Garden of Sand nor as cynical as Catcher in the Rye , the narrative, as related by 10-year-old Trygve Napoli, may remind readers of both. The year is 1943, and the setting is Los Angeles, where Trygve has been reclaimed by his detached mother ("She has a Norwegian fatalism, tough enough to outlast winter.") now that she has remarried. Trygve has spent lonely years living in Montana with his indifferent Norwegian grandparents and attending a brutal school "where the pedagogical philosophy was Education Through Fear." Now a bed-wetter given to incessant perseveration, Trygve finds himself part of a family that includes his new step-father, the smooth Mitchell Selvage (a milkman and black-market opportunist; schizzy Aunt Ginger; her drunken husband Gerald, a sailor in the Canadian Navy; and his 15-year-old son William. Since their apartment building doesn't permit children, Trygve has learned to hide in a nearby bunker whenever the landlord comes around. Looming large as a backdrop is the War, to which Trygve is connected by a complex fantasy life and his shortwave radio. DeMarinis has created in Trygve a perfect narrator--the child as witness--a character both naive and accepting, and yet skilled in his ironic and perceptive observations.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Set in Los Angeles during World War II, this engaging novel charts the uncertain life of its narrator, 11-year-old Trygve Napoli, as he is reunited with his mother after three years. Focusing on the interplay of emotions among Trygve and his mother, stepfather, and other relatives, DeMarinis shows how each deals with the anxiety of war, loss, fear, ridicule, and, finally, death. Trygve's way is "becoming anonymous" and being "capable of mustering any necessary lie at will." Told with wit, charm, and pathos, this work is highly recommended.
- Joseph M. Levandoski, Free Lib. of Philadelphia
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (November 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583226389
• ISBN-13: 978-1583226384
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,631,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The haunting coming-of-age tale of a lonely kid in wartime., June 11, 2000

By 

Margaret Fiore - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year of the Zinc Penny (Paperback)

Maybe it wouldn't be too bad to live this story for just anyone. Some of us are more independent than others, some are just simple, and some are unemotional. But this is the story of an emotional, intelligent, and complex boy, and a brief year of life with his mother and an extended family.

Paul's widowed mother has left him several times in unhappy circumstances - with his grandparents for several years, and in various institutions. When he finally has the chance to live with her in a family context, he never wants it to end. But it is wartime, and everything is much too complicated and desperate for normalcy to prevail. This is the story of Paul's manic struggle to swim rather than sink in the much-too-adult life current that has collided with his childhood.

This is a very American story, and many American readers will crack a grin as they identify with Paul's maudlin escapist daydreams, as he visualizes himself at the controls of a fighter plane, coming down in enemy territory, and (of course) dying dramatically in the arms of various beautiful women!

A very good read, sad and funny, with a haunting aftertaste.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem., September 15, 2006

By 

N.K. (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year of the Zinc Penny: A Novel (Paperback)

I loved this book when I read it in hardcover (from Norton) when it was first published. Kudos to Seven Stories press for putting it back in print. Funny, sad, deeply humane and beautifully written. It's a gem.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kilroy was here . . ., December 30, 2004

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Year of the Zinc Penny: A Novel (Paperback)

This short, comic-sad novel tells the first-person story of a ten-year-old boy living in wartime Los Angeles. The year is 1943. Men are off fighting the war; women are riveting planes in the city's aircraft factories. The protagonist, Trygve (nicknamed Monk), lives in a crowded apartment with his mother and her show-business aspiring boyfriend, her sister and her sister's Canadian husband, and his teenage son. Seen through the inexperienced but curious eyes of a boy, these characters form the center of the novel, which traces events in their emotionally tangled, often unstable lives.

Impressionable and inquisitive, the young hero is continually instructed in the ill-formed opinions of the older males in his life, while his mostly sensible mother tries without much success to counter-balance her sister's other-worldly reflections on past lives and the tenuousness of this one. Meanwhile, his fevered imagination is fed by the movies and what he hears on his short-wave radio set, as he daydreams of piloting fighter jets only to die melodramatically in the arms of grade school sweethearts. Like everyday life itself, there's no particular plot line to this story, just one thing after another, finally adding up to a kind of worldly wisdom that sometimes comes in times of war, dislocation and anxiety - represented here by the image of Kilroy peeking quizzically over a fence.

I recommend this novel to readers interested in the zeitgeist of the 1940s war years (the period details evoke this era wonderfully), Los Angeles, and coming-of-age stories. It will leave you with memories of those years on the verge of puberty, first love, and an ever-elusive maturity.