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    Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories
    Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories
    Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories
    Ebook285 pages4 hours

    Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories

    By Scott Nadelson

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    WINNER OF THE H.L. DAVIS AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION at the 2004 Oregon Book Awards and GLCA's 2005 New Writers Award, Scott Nadelson’s interrelated short stories are graceful, vivid narratives that bring into sudden focus the spirit and the stubborn resilience of the Brickmans, a Jewish family of four living in suburban New Jersey. The central character, Daniel Brickman, forges obstinately through his own plots and desires as he struggles to balance his sense of identity with his longing to gain acceptance from his family and peers. In Kosher, Daniel’s disdain for his parents’ values and lifestyle, for their materialism and need for security, leads him to take a job as a telemarketer for the Robowski Fund for the Disabled, a charity benefiting two people only: Daniel and Helen Robowski. And in Young Radicals, Daniel gathers research for a thesis on early Soviet history by interviewing his grandfather, now a retiree in Florida, who painted factories and sang Communist work songs in 1920s Leningrad before immigrating to America. This fierce collection provides an unblinking examination of family life and the human instinct for attachment.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHawthorne Books
    Release dateApr 1, 2011
    ISBN9780983304999
    Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories
    Author

    Scott Nadelson

    SCOTT NADELSON is the author of a novel, a memoir, and five previous story collections, including One of Us, winner of the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, and The Fourth Corner of the World, named a Fiction Prize Honor Book by the Association of Jewish Libraries. He teaches at Willamette University and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.

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    • 4/5
      I liked the writing and depiction of characters. He is clever and quite perceptive and knows how much detail to present. I cared and felt I knew the characters.
    • 5/5
      Scott Nadelson's SAVING STANLEY is, hands down, one of the best damn books I have read in a long time, and I read a lot of books, many of them VERY good. This one, though, well, it was a pure joy to read. Nadelson is a young writer in total command of his craft. Subtitled THE BRICKMAN STORIES, Nadelson's book might be found shelved with short story collections, and, while it's true there are eight distinct stories here, taken together they tell the story of one family, i.e. the Brickmans of northern New Jersey. The central character of these interrelated stories is Daniel Brickman, the second son of Arthur and Hannah (Collins, changed from Kollechelnik) Brickman. Daniel's story is the most complete, presenting him, in non-chronological order, from boyhood and adolescence ("Mr. Mervin", "With Equals Alone" and "Saving Stanley") into struggling adulthood ("Young Radicals" and "Kosher"). Son Jared, four years older than Daniel, gets his own story in "Anything You Need." Mother Hannah takes center stage in "Saving Stanley" but also figures prominently in "Hannah of Troy." Father Arthur, a scientist, is the featured player in "Why Not?". Even Daniel's Russian Jewish immigrant grandfather, Murray Collins, gets a part (in "Young Radicals"). In the end, though, all of these perfectly realized stories blend seamlessly together to give you the story of an upper middle-class New Jersey family, all of them just doing the best that they can. Daniel and Jared both go through the usual teenage rebellions, thinking they HATE their parents and will NEVER be like them. The usual locked doors, rages and tantrums. In the meantime you get an inside look at the parents' lives too, both in the present, and when they were young, newly married and struggling to keep it all together in the tumult of the sixties.And Daniel, older, finally comes to better understand his parents. One of the most poignant and moving passages in the book comes in a scene where Daniel, about to be married, visits his parents, listens to a never-told story from his mother, and watches the two of them, now both sixty-ish, interacting together - "... and I glanced from one to the other, nearly choking with envy."Scott Nadelson, probably because he is Jewish and from New Jersey, has been likened to a young Philip Roth. Well, maybe. He's got the skills, the writing chops. But the bitterness and the anger often found in Roth are missing. There's something else, something much warmer in SAVING STANLEY than I ever found in Roth. I think it's an innate respect for family, a recognition of the importance of family. I just LIKED Daniel Brickman a lot more than I ever did Alex Portnoy or Nathan Zuckerman, you know? Daniel is only somewhere in his twenties when this book ends. He's made his share of mistakes, has some regrets. His future remains uncertain. But I think he'll be okay. Yeah, I do.I think I already said this once, but this is simply a damn fine book. I enjoyed it immensely and will recommend it highly.P.S. Oh yeah, in case you're wondering - and this is not a a spoiler - Stanley is the family cat.

    Book preview

    Saving Stanley - Scott Nadelson

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