John VercherRecensioni

This is the story of a man wheeling in grief, a man whose mistakes have dominated his life, who hits bottom and finds his way back. For most of the novel, you won’t like this man, and you will be unsure of the line between psychological and physical illness and reality.

He has lost his son, the fruit of a one night stand with a friend, a son with whom he could never connect. He is not going to earn tenure if he can’t find a publisher for his second book, but times have changed and no one cares about “racial narratives”. As a biracial man with a black father and white mother, he has struggled with identity all of his life.

He discovers he has inherited a plantation from his mother’s father. It was to go to his son. He makes the trip to the shore, intending to sell the land. After seventeen years of sobriety, he accepts a drink, which does not go well with his Lexapro. He has a blackout, walks into the ocean, and is stung by a jellyfish. His leg becomes infected. He learns that there are bodies of masters and slaves on the plantation grounds.

As he plummets in a downward spiral, haunted by visions and ghosts, he gains a few friends. He faces up to his past, and inspired by his recollected son’s sharp insights and understanding, finds the courage to change.

I delighted in reading such a unique novel, so dark and darkly humorous, so deep and psychologically and culturally rich.

Thanks to Celadon Books for a free book through NetGalley.

From the author: "Whether you love or hate my work..."

Love:
"If I got to chose between your God and the devil,
the devil is fine." !

Love: Freddy and Clarence!
Malcolm, at times
the Road Flagger

Love: the imagined words of the people from beyond the grave

Enjoy: Great evolving, revolving plot that early got lost when he wanted
to run over a fox, then recovering alcoholic walks into a bar, gets drunk & wears "slacks."

Hate: despite doctor telling him not to mix alcohol with medications, he does this and ends up with (too many) repeated panic attacks, sleep paralysis, hallucinations, puking, delusions, visions...

So, he disses two Whiteys, complete with kicking the woman and this makes him (finally) feel happy until his "state" returns.
So, if a White man kicked a Black woman, that would be okay?

How he keeps drinking despite stopping after drunken drop of his baby son and his son's accidental death is an unresolved mystery.

Also hate: images of tentacles in leg and refusal to see a doctor for pain.

Dislike: not even considering that any decent Black or White or Brown or Red or Yellow therapist could have helped him get beyond himself and his internal divisions so he could figure out why (genetic? personality?...) he does not feel warmth instead of coldness toward people, whether he loves or despises them

*reviewed from free ARC via bookishfirst*

Publisher: Celadon Books (MacMillan)
Publication Date: Jun 18 2024
supposedly shipped 4/16, still waiting

Compelling plot and riveting backstory of main characters until, later, Bobby decides that he needs a father -

and his own magically appears.

Readers may sense that the ending will not be perfect for Bobby despite his new intention to confess,
yet the mystery is why he would again get into the truck with Aaron after all that had happened...?
Doesn't quite ring true.

And how can white supremacy Aaron possibly state that he loves a Black man...?

I received an advance copy of this book, Thank you.

I have never read a book quite like this. I was curious, and the book compelled me to finish it, but I didn't like it. What I didn't like about it, probably would cause the author to say, "Don't you understand, your reaction is exactly what I was trying to evoke in people." and he would be right. The book jumps right into grabbing your attention and making you connect emotionally to the narrator. He is in the procession heading to bury his teenage son. He's carrying on a conversation with his son; conversations he should have had while his son was alive. Suddenly he is gripped by a panic attack, all this I could completely understand and sympathize with. We don't know how his son died, just that it was way too soon.
Throughout the rest of the book, the story unwinds as he continues to talk with his son, reflect back to his own childhood, reflect back even further. This is where I began to get impatient with the character. He's got a lot of baggage, and that weighs him down. It weighs him down in a way that he is 100% self absorbed and self wallowing. As he talks to his son, and looks back on their conversations, he admits he should have said something other than what he had. After half the book like this, I wanted to smack him and say, "yes, you were the grown up, you should have tried harder to reach your son". See, I told you, the author succeeded in evoking my emotions. The book continues on, all his baggage is clearly what his self revolves around, and he can't move forward. The way the author writes even emphasizes this. There were at least a couple places where one sentence went on for over 1/2 the page. Yes, I was reading silently, but mentally I couldn't take a breath. It wasn't until almost the last few pages, that the Narrator admits he's wasted his time/life trying to be something he isn't, but couldn't stop trying for it.

As I mentioned before, I didn't care for this book yet, without a doubt, it drew a strong reaction from me. I imagine there will be a lot of people who love it.

What a ride! This novel bugged me in a bunch of ways (It is mostly that I despise the meta-ness of a book having an author character writing the book I am reading) but ultimately was really well done.

I received an ARC from Celadon Press for review.

Yet another outstanding debut novel, this highly engaging story is timely given the current state of democracy and race. While the theme is honesty between family and friends, the core element is racial divide and correlation of crime with race. Torn by loyalty and seeking truth the protagonist is taken through the wringer of life as the author immerses the reader into his journey. Anger gives way to compassion and truth rises to the surface. Hard to put down, you'd never know this was a first effort. I look forward to sequels from this author!

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A harrowing and spellbinding story about family, the complications of mixed-race relationships, misplaced loyalties, and the price athletes pay to entertain—from the critically acclaimed author of Three-Fifths

Xavier "Scarecrow" Wallace, a mixed-race MMA fighter on the wrong side of thirty, is facing the fight of his life. Xavier is losing his battle with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), or pugilistic dementia—a struggle he can no longer deny. Through the fog of memory loss, migraines, and paranoia, Xavier does his best to keep in shape while he waits for the call that will reinstate him after a year-long suspension.

Until then, he watches his diet and trains every day at the Philadelphia gym owned by his cousin-cum-manager, Shot, a retired champion boxer to whom Xavier owes an unpayable debt. Xavier makes ends meet by teaching youth classes at Shot’s gym and by living rent-free in the house of his white father, whom Xavier has been forced to commit to a nursing home because of the progress of his end-stage Alzheimer’s. Dementia has revealed a shocking truth about Sam Wallace, and Xavier finally gains insight into why his Black mother left the family when Xavier was young.

As Xavier battles his aging body and his failing brain, each day is filled with challenges and setbacks. Then Xavier is offered a chance at redemption: a last-minute comeback fight in the largest MMA promotion. If he can get himself back in the game, he’ll be able to clear his name and begin to pay off Shot. But with his memory in shreds and his life crumbling around him, can Xavier hold onto the focus he needs to survive? After the Lights Go Out is a haunting, unflinching look at the aftermath of a career in MMA—as Xavier forgets everything around him, you'll want to remember every single word.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is one rough ride of a book. There are people whose road through life is not paved, has many potholes, throws up gravel and clouds of caliche dust as their bald-tired forty-year-old chassis bounces and shakes over to one ditch, down into another. And that is who we're with here. Xavier is not, was never, expecting a limo ride, not even waiting for a cab ride...he's still rollin' but the roll is slow and it's not getting faster.

The bad marriage he came from was made worse by its permanent poison-gift to him. His mother was Black and father white, so he knows something a lot of people don't have to: Not belonging to either side in a war isn't being neutral. That's a gift only those with a clear side, one that can't be denied, are given. He's mixed. He's mixed up, he's mixed it up in fights his whole life. No one wanted him on their team so he used what strength and speed he could find to go one-on-one with other rage-filled testosterone-poisoned Others.

Now nearing forty, he's sure he's got no future. So is everyone else but they never thought he had a present. His efforts to get one more headline bout in Mixed Martial Arts are, as we meet him, wavering in and out of existence in front of eyes that don't connect to his brain right anymore. The voices he hears clearest are the ones in his battered head, they aren't competing with tinnitus. At least they aren't the ones telling him things he doesn't want to hear...his father, foundering under Alzheimer's disease's heavy burdens, doesn't remember him but does remember how to hate, his chances to fight again, more, are steadily melting away and there's nothing else he can do to make a living.

The life of someone always on the margins is, realistically, never going to turn into a happily ever after. Xavier never once thought it would. He chooses his own adventure, like he always has, right up to the last bitter dreg from the cup.

Author Vercher tells this deeply moving, unbearably honest story in direct, immediate prose. He selects the small images...a texting app's continuation icon of dots keeping him on tenterhooks about his future, the feeling of hanging his hand out the window while driving his dad's old car bringing back the times he did the same thing as a kid...that make Xavier real. That keep him, however fleetingly, locked in to the present moment. They work very well, are sharp but still small enough to make them fit right on everyone.

What isn't quite as smooth is the passages where Xavier is learning his mother and father, very late in life from my point of view, are fully human people. What Author Vercher does to make Xavier aware of his mother's full humanity was a scene both a little long as well as underdeveloped. It needed not to feel rushed as Xavier learns Evelyn was a very different person than the mother he had. The issues around dementia were handled very well, in my experienced opinion. When Xavier realizes that disinhibition is part of the course of dementia, it rocks his world. It did not need to be played out in the over-the-top manner that it was. Honestly, the choice to make Xavier's pathology so very foregrounded wore on my patience at times. Every reader has their own crotchets...these are mine.

Perfection not being of this Earth, I can honestly say that your Yule gift cards, spent on this deep and emotionally honest journey, will not be wasted. This second novel tells me that Author Vercher is a gift to the readers who want to get into a story and come out changed.

Bravo, good sir.½

Gritty Urban Noir
Review of the Dreamscape Media LLC audiobook edition released simultaneously with the original Agora Books hardcover edition (September 2019)

This reading was part of my investigation of the novels nominated for the 2020 Edgar Awards by the Mystery Writers of America. Three-Fifths is a nominee for Best First Novel. The winners are expected to be announced April 30, 2020, which may be postponed due to the current world pandemic situation.

Three-Fifths is not so much a crime mystery as a character study. Bobby Saraceno, of mixed race parentage, has passed for white his entire life and most especially with his childhood friend Aaron. Aaron is convicted with drug-dealing and serves a prison term where he joins a white supremacist group for jail yard protection. When released from prison he is a virulent racist who nonchalantly commits a race murder while accompanied by Bobby. Bobby has been living with his single parent mother Isabel who has lied that Bobby's father Robert is dead until Robert accidentally re-enters her life and eventually Bobby's. The characters and conflicts are in place for the revelation of lifetime secrets and a tragic conclusion.

John Vercher produces a strong first novel here and I would even say that he is my front runner for the 2020 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. I have yet to read 2 of the 6 nominees though.

I listened to the Audiobook edition and the narrator J.D. Jackson was excellent in all voices.

Trivia and Links
Three-Fifths is the first title from Agora Books, a new imprint of independent publisher Polis Books which will be "a diversity-focused imprint devoted to crime and noir fiction." Other initial releases from Agora Books are Remember (October 2019) by Patricia Smith, The Ninja Daughter (November 2019) by Tori Eldridge,Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (February 2020), Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem by Gary Phillips (February 2020), Line of Sight by James Queally (March 2020), Both Sides: Stories From the Border ed. Gabino Eglesias (April 2020). Watch for further releases from Agora Books at the Polis Books website.