Amazon.com Review
Steve Reeves, the protagonist of Stephan Jarmaillo's first novel, Going Postal, is living proof that a college degree doesn't get you that far anymore. The first and only member of his family to graduate from college, Steve has risen no higher on the ladder to success than working at a bagel shop, a job he's just lost. Losing a job is, for Steve, demoralizing, even more so since his girlfriend has exited from his life at the same time. What's the unemployed son of a San Diego mailman to do? As the title suggests, Steve bears a grudging admiration for a subset of his father's colleagues, those frustrated and overworked postal workers who finally snap and start shooting; he even starts carrying a gun that his father gave him. But by novel's end Steve has a new girl, a new job, and a measure of contentment that even a Colt .45 can't supply. How he makes it all happen without Going Postal is pure entertainment.
From Booklist
Steve Reeves is just not mailman material, not like his father or his brother-in-law. Nor does he follow in the herculean footsteps of his namesake. This spindly, glasses-wearing college grad cannot hold a job, though he can shoot a gun. He riddles conversations with tales of postal-revenge killings, stories his father brought home from work. Throughout his adventures in unemployment, he spends too much time alone in his cluttered-with-fast-food-litter San Francisco cottage, obsessing about sex and role-playing with the Colt .45 his father gave him. He secretly totes it to the Safeway, so while contemplating Green Giant petit peas he is packing the pistol. Steve drives himself crazy with the realization that his whole life has been a constant exercise in "trying not to do things": not pleasing his mother, not seeking a career, and, now, not going postal. An angst-filled coming-of-age novel, like Catcher in the Rye and Generation X, but with a violent '90s edge. Jennifer Henderson
