Wade Rubenstein

From December 2005 School Library Journal:
Rubenstein has subtitled his work, “The Inconceivable Life of Franco Pajarito Zanpa,” and inconceivable is truly the word for this treasure of a tale. The infant Franco is discovered in a seagull’s nest by Ernesto Zanpa, a shiftless young man who drifts through his days with as little work as possible. Despite the objections of Ernesto’s young wife Venus—a streetwalker with aspirations of Internet porn stardom—Ernesto quickly becomes attached to the little boy with feathers on his body and a beak where his mouth should be. As Ernesto takes to fatherhood, he finds himself driven to make a good life for Franco, and discovers his hidden culinary talent in the greasy kitchen of the neighborhood diner. At the same time that Ernesto is trying to do right by his boy, there are plenty of people who want to capitalize on Franco’s oddities, and Ernesto is kept busy fending off a crooked lawyer, the Russian mafia, and a doctor who sees Franco’s surgical potential as his ticket to medical glory. The wildly improbable twists and turns of the story are grounded in the all-too-real egocentricity of Rubenstein’s characters. By turns tragic and hilarious, Rubenstein has given us a story about what it means to be a family, about the fine line between exceptional and bizarre, and about the truth that what is grotesque in this life has little to do with outward appearance and everything to do with personal ambition and greed. Danny Shanahan’s simple line drawings that precede each chapter accentuate the wacky charm of this first novel.

… (meer)

The fanciful premise outlined in the inside side flap intrigued me, but ultimately this novel didn't amount to much of anything. The author's attempts at creating a supposedly vivid New York instead felt labored and calculating attempts at mimicking the style of much better writers.

Key to any tragedy, I think, is sympathy with the characters experiencing said tragedy. Key to any comedy is internal logic and uncomfortable realism of situations to reality. The characters here are never allowed to grow beyond the limits of their conception within grotesque caricature, and thus their actions do not amount to any emotional impact, positive or negative. Furthermore, the disparate narrative strands linger and fail to weave together the convergence of intentions (of greed, of hope, of ambition), or yield any painfully true moments out of exaggerated circumstances. Rating: 1/5 stars… (meer)