The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac

Starred review from January 9, 2012
Calvin Moretti is plagued with suburban angst. He still lives at home, works as an assistant at a school for autistic kids, and hasn’t finished graduate school, for which he’s now saddled with debt. Despite being fortunate enough to live in a million-dollar home in upstate New York’s tony Sleepy Hollow, he can’t stand his loving-if-irksome family: the successful older brother, Chip; the beleaguered but devoted mother; the infuriating, depressed father recovering from cancer after expensive treatment. Thankfully, Calvin is human enough to tolerate his pregnant 17-year old sister, Elissa, and a host of childhood stoner friends. Apathetic to the core and wildly frustrating, Calvin is a difficult character to like but also brutally honest about his flaws, which makes him heartbreakingly human, more like his father than he realizes and kinder than he wants to be. D’Agostino’s narrator wants to “know how it feels to be passionate about something” and his keen observations about family expose the worst in him. Wickedly funny and as often beautiful as it is meandering, this debut novel reads much like Calvin’s life: bursts of activity followed by long periods of idleness and deep thought. Agent: Ethan Bassoff, Inkwell Management.

December 15, 2011
Cancer. An overdue mortgage. An unexpected pregnancy. All weigh upon Calvin Moretti, film-major graduate, special-education teacher assistant and vaguely guilty semi-slacker. Cal actually is responsible for none of these troubles. He has dropped out of grad school and taken work as a teacher's assistant in a school for autistic children, a job he's good at but disengaged from. But he does live at home, where his father copes with cancer, bemoans his loss of his flying career and obsesses about death. Meantime Cal's harried mother stretches disability benefits to cover bills and­ stave off foreclosure on their suburban New York City home. Cal's older brother, Chip, also residing at home, brings a substantial paycheck home from the city, but neither Chip nor Cal are ready to assume responsibility, financial or otherwise. That doesn't dissuade Cal's younger sister Elissa, a high-school senior, from confiding in him that she's pregnant. Therein lies D'Agostino's narrative arc. Mired in ennui, Cal watches independent and self-aware Elissa struggle with her decision to keep her child-to-be even while reaching out to empathize with her father. Cal soon experiences a series of convoluted self-realizations suggesting he can accept that life and love carry responsibilities, to family and self. The book is modern realism, eavesdropping on a family big on hugs, vocal expressions of love and lacing casual conversations with the F-word as they live a life less perfect with sardonic humor and fatalism. D'Agostino sketches a memorable turning point in a scene involving a wedding and a gunshot, an occasion that blasts Cal out of the boredom generated by a world of unearned comfort toward an existentialist awareness. Cal's character is well-defined, one that grows in likability. Surprisingly, so does the self-centered Chip. Elissa is more foil than central to the narrative, but the older Morettis mirror modern woes that cast shadows upon the American dream. D'Agostino's fiction debut winningly describes the millennial generation exploring the borders of love and responsibility.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 1, 2012

Twenty-four-year-old Calvin Moretti still lives at home with his quirky parents and siblings. He is angry about his situation--employed only because his mother requires it, and he has no money saved up to move out. In addition, his father has been diagnosed with cancer, his teenage sister is pregnant, the family is about to lose their home in Sleepy Hollow, NY, to foreclosure, and Calvin just wants to escape it all. He gradually realizes that his options are either to move out and allow his family to struggle alone or to force himself to grow up so he can emotionally and financially help the people he loves. VERDICT In this sometimes amusing, sometimes heartbreaking debut coming-of-age story, Calvin's initial self-absorption and self-pity will be off-putting to readers; however, as he struggles to make the hard decisions that will shape his present and future, they will soon root for him to make the right decisions to keep his family afloat. D'Agostino's style will appeal to Michael Chabon fans and readers who enjoy novels about dysfunctional but lovable families.--Katie Wernz, Powell, OH

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2012
With a sense of humor that suggests Bart Simpson, Calvin Moretti approaches the challenges laid out before him. He's stuck in a job he dislikes. He lives at home with his parents, beef-head brother, and little sister (student-loan payments make it impossible for him to move-out). Not to mention that his father is suffering from cancer, his mother is struggling to keep the house from foreclosure, and his 17-year-old sister just announced that she's pregnant. The best thing he has going for him right now is that one of his friends just had knee surgery, which means he can get a supply of prescription pain-killers to distract himself over the weekend. When things seem as if they couldn't get worse, they do. D'Agostino's tragicomic first novel is an insatiably readable tale of a family held together with duct tape and string. Yet when the going gets tough, Calvin knows how to see the humor in life and pull himself and his family out of an emotionally perilous situation. A memorable debut by a writer who bears watching.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)