Busy Monsters

Starred review from May 9, 2011
In his riotous debut novelâup there with, say, James Wilcox's Modern BaptistsâGiraldi tells the story of Charles Homar, a jilted fiancé who embarks on a hilariously ill-advised odyssey to win back his beloved. Charles is a "memoirist of mediocre fame" whose engagement to the lovely Gillian falls apart when she takes off with oceanographer Jacob Jacobi. After a short jail sentence for ineptly shooting up Jacobi's boat, Charles decides that the only way to win back Gillian is to prove his manhood to her. He sets off on a cross-country odyssey: searching for Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest with a Jewish African-American hunter; looking for UFOs with an ex-girlfriend in Seattle who claims to have been abducted by aliens; seeking advice from an astronomer in Boulder, Colo., who has his own calamitous love life to deal with; and getting fit with the aid of a New Jersey bodybuilder and two Chinese prostitutes before heading back to Boston for a final reckoning. Charles's journeyâfilled with offbeat characters, seen through a perfectly skewed worldview, and related in an idiosyncratic voiceâmight remind readers of the one taken by the equally wrong-headed Ray Midge in Charles Portis's comic masterpiece, The Dog of the South.

Starred review from June 15, 2011

Charlie Homar is a memoirist for a slick national magazine and a haplessly unlucky soul in love. When he meets Gillian at a carnival in his Connecticut hometown, he feels he's finally found the love of his life, and their relationship goes along quite happily until she takes off unannounced and pursues her lifelong passion to bring back a giant squid. With Gillian at sea hunting a monster of nature, Charlie is left at sea romantically and spiritually, so he embarks on a quest to try to find a way to win her back. Seeking advice and counsel all across the country, he confronts Bigfoot in the Northwest and UFOs (and UFO hunters) in Seattle, all the while battling his own equally dangerous internal monsters. VERDICT Charlie's last name is no coincidence as here we have a seriocomic picaresque that references everything from the Odyssey to medieval romances to Don Quixote and Moby-Dick. A brilliant first novel that may well be in the running for 2011's literary awards.--Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, North Andover, MA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2011
In this very funny first novel, Giraldi launches his loquacious narrator on an absurd quest that is touching as well as comical. Charles Homar is a memoirist of only mediocre fame (despite the fact that he seems to be perpetually encountering devoted fans of his column), who is deeply in love with the vaunted Gillian. When she decides to leave him to pursue her burning passion for hunting a giant squid, he more or less loses his mind. On the dubious advice of his macho best friend, Groot, he lets loose with machine-gun fire on the prow of his beloved's sea vessel and subsequently lands in the hoosegow. Upon release, he hunts for Sasquatch in the wilds of Canada, looks for UFOs in Seattle, and seeks advice about love from a steroid-fueled bodybuilder in suburban New Jersey. Through it all, Homar treats us to a discursive rant on culture high and low, dissing Goethe and Mel Gibson in equal measure. Erudite, salacious, and frequently hilarious, Busy Monsters heralds the emergence of a prodigiously talented comic writer onto the literary scene.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)