Mama's Boy

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Gus Reppo's parents have everything figured out for their son, right down to the county in which they hope he will practice dentistry. When they follow him to the air force where he has enlisted (after all, who else will make sure he is served adequate meals), he realises it's going to be anything but easy to shake off his kin. And when he then finds out that his parents might not be who they seem, his life takes a turn for the downright weird. But steadied by Rick DeMarinis' hilarious prose and guiding hand, Gus is finally given some space to develop.

Reviews

Quick, lucid storytelling, and curt and cruel, yet rich language transforms what is a rather simple premisea sheltered adolescent in the 1950s outgrowing his parents' cocoon and trying to find himself in the armyinto a searing 286-page quest for sex, love and purpose. Adirondack Review


Sardonic and absurdist in the mode of Albee and Shepard, a nuclear-age, X-rated Twain, and one of our best underappreciated writers, DeMarinis takes lunacy to new dimensions as he toys with archetypal tales of incest and warriors betrayed in this droll, furious, heartbreaking cold war saga of war's long shadow and love's torments. Donna Seaman, Booklist


I have always believed that Rick DeMarinis is one of the most talented and versatile writers of my generation, and in my opinion Mama's Boy is his best work yet. He finds humanity in the bizarre and barbaric, and page by page he shows how redemption can find us when we cannot find it ourselves. This is one of the best novels I've read in years. James Lee Burke, author of Cimarron Rose and Black Cherry Blues


DeMarinis is a contemporary avatar of that tradition in American short story writing that by way of Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, O'Connor, Welt, and Cheever, is essentially religious and, because rooted in the everyday, comic his art, then, is comedy of a very high order. Russell Banks

Author Bio

Rick DeMarinis was the highly acclaimed author of ten novels, includingThe Year of the Zinc Penny, aNew York TimesNotable book, and six short story col-lections, includingApocalypse ThenandBorrowed Hearts. In 1990, he received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Each year,Cutthroat- A Journal of the Arts, awards a short story prize in his name. Rick passed away on June 12, 2019.