Let Me Explain You

Stavros Mavrakis has a nightmare about a goat. The next day a goat appears in his New Jersey diner. Stavros is convinced it's an omen and that he's going to die in 10 days. Narrator Robertson Dean makes the growling, coarse, often crude Stavros as appealing as possible. Dean faithfully delivers Stavros's infuriating behaviors, patriarchal tyranny, and biting comments and shines when expressing Stavros's wry outsider's observations. He deftly creates Stavros's second-generation Greek-American daughters, late wife, and black mistress with the slightest shifts in voice and attitude. The story is engaging with its inevitable immigrant-curmudgeon/next-gen conflict and thoughtful reflections about ethnicity and family. But it's Dean's sensitive performance that keeps the novel from slipping into caricature. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine


Stavros Mavrakis has a nightmare about a goat. The next day a goat appears in his New Jersey diner. Stavros is convinced it's an omen and that he's going to die in 10 days. Narrator Robertson Dean makes the growling, coarse, often crude Stavros as appealing as possible. Dean faithfully delivers Stavros's infuriating behaviors, patriarchal tyranny, and biting comments and shines when expressing Stavros's wry outsider's observations. He deftly creates Stavros's second-generation Greek-American daughters, late wife, and black mistress with the slightest shifts in voice and attitude. The story is engaging with its inevitable immigrant-curmudgeon/next-gen conflict and thoughtful reflections about ethnicity and family. But it's Dean's sensitive performance that keeps the novel from slipping into caricature. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

June 22, 2015
Liontas's often raucous debut about a dysfunctional Greek-American family opens with Stavros Stavros Mavrakis's email to his three daughters and second ex-wife. After the Goat of Death appears to him, he believes he has 10 days to live. The proud, successful Stavros seethes with anger, and in broken English gives edicts to his family and insults them, shifting any blame away from himself, thereby assuring that his email is received in the worst possible way. Backstory about his early life on Crete and his first years in America with his first wife pinpoints the origin of his rage and the troubles he visits upon his two eldest daughters. Lacking parental support, Stavroula becomes a successful chef, but in her private life an unfed need leaves her hungry. Litza, the middle daughter, unwittingly offered herself as a pawn in her parents' disastrous divorce, and became a hot, angry mess. The youngest daughter, Ruby, from Stavros's second marriage, is the golden child. Liontas adds tremendously to the novel's ambiance through Stavros's idiomatic language, expertly reveals the layers of her characters' lives, and perfectly captures their emotional temperatures in an unputdownable read. Agent: David McCormick, McCormick and Williams.