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WORK TITLE: How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/7/1975
WEBSITE: http://paniogianopoulos.com/
CITY:
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Married to Molly Ringwald since 2007.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2013092617 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2013092617 |
| HEADING: | Gianopoulos, Panio |
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| 053 | _0 |a PS3607.I2245 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Gianopoulos, Panio |
| 370 | __ |e Los Angeles, Calif. |
| 670 | __ |a A familiar beast, 2012 : |b Title page (Panio Gianopoulos) About author (Panio Gianopoulos’s writing has appeared in various publications, including Northwest Review, Tin House, The Rattling Wall, The Brooklyn Rail, Nerve, and FiveChapters. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for nonfiction literature, he has been included in the anthologies Cooking and stealing: the tin house nonfiction reader, The bastard on the couch, and The encyclopedia of exes: 26 stories by men of love gone wrong. He lives with his family in Los Angeles.) |
PERSONAL
Born July 7, 1975. Married Molly Ringwald (an actor), 2007; children: Mathilda Ereni, Roman Stylianos, Adele Georgiana.
EDUCATION:University of Massachusetts, Amherst, B.A., 1997; Stanford University Graduate School of Business, M.B.A., 2010.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Talk Magazine, New York, NY, assistant editor, 1999; Bloomsbury USA, New York, editor, 1999-2007; Boston Consulting Group, Los Angeles, CA, management consultant, 2009; Palindrome Media, Los Angeles, cofounder and creative director, 2011-13; Heleo, New York, cofounder, vice president for content, and vice president for finance, 2015–.
AWARDS:New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Non-Fiction.
WRITINGS
Work represented in anthologies, including The Bastard on the Couch, Cooking and Stealing: The Tin House Non-Fiction Reader, and The Encyclopedia of Exes. Stories, essays, and poetry published in print and online periodicals, including Tin House, Northwest Review, Salon, Rattling Wall, Chicago Quarterly Review, Big Fiction, Brooklyn Rail, Catamaran Literary Reader, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
SIDELIGHTS
Panio Gianopoulos is an author of essays, poetry, and fiction. He has also worked as an editor and a management consultant, and has founded a book subscription service. His books include the novella A Familiar Beast and the short story collection How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money. “Writing is a grind—slow and clumsy, full of false starts, missteps, and obstacles—but once in a while, suddenly everything gets out of your way and you take off, racing along the page,” he told an interviewer at the James River Writers Website. “When that happens it feels like you’re driving a getaway car.”
A Familiar Beast
The protagonist of A Familiar Beast, Marcus, faces disgrace when it is revealed he has had an affair with a colleague at the Northern California engineering firm where he works—a firm owned by the father of his wife, and his wife happens to be pregnant. People who were once his friends “leaked their derision like potted plants overfilled by amateur gardeners,” he observes. Marcus seeks solace by traveling to North Carolina to visit an old high school friend, Edgar, with whom he has recently reconnected; Edgar has problems of his own. Gianopoulos narrates their comical attempts to escape their troubles as they drink, flirt with women, and, at Edgar’s insistence, go deer huntingn although Marcus hates the idea of killing animals for sport. “Marcus is on a journey of self-discovery, and a journey like this takes some time,” Gianopoulos told Huffington Post website interviewer Teddy Wayne, explaining why we wrote A Familiar Beast as a novella rather than a short story. “It can’t be rushed. Not that he completes his journey by any means, but A Familiar Beast covers what one might call his first insight.” Marcus, the author noted, has done some despicable things, “but he’s not walking away unscathed.”
A Familiar Beast is marked by skillful writing and biting humor, according to some critics. “Gianopoulos is such a polished wordsmith that he seems to be emerging from the likes of the great authors of the past and the present,” observed Grady Harp at the Literary Aficionado website. “His prose is economical, eloquently phrased, and rich in detail while at the same time not drawing attention to the art of writing but instead using that gift to sculpt characters and emotions that burn through the pages and into our memories.” Brooklyn Rail contributor Larissa Zimberoff commented: “Gianopoulos’s exacting prose had me re-reading lines and laughing along with the narrator–even in his misery.” Melissa MacEwen, writing on her eponymous blog, related that the author’s “wit underscores the novella’s pervasive anxiety and, as we laugh, we also wince in empathetic recognition.” She further noted that Gianopoulos “has complete control over his story, with the result that his calm, measured tone catches the reader off guard with its poignancy.” Another blogger, at a site called It’s Either Sadness or Euphoria, reported that Gianopoulos “is a terrific writer and his use of language to convey emotions and events we’ve seen before is tremendously effective, and his storytelling really packs a punch in a short number of pages.”
How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money
This volume collects nine short stories, most of which have troubled protagonists. Jonah, the main character of “Love and Heuristics,” wonders why his relationships with women fail, but it is clear he is clueless about romance–he waits until the day after Valentine’s Day to buy candy at half price, and gives it to his girlfriend then, and he is starting to take advice from a promiscuous colleague. The title story depicts a married man contemplating an affair with a neighbor, losing out on a promotion to the boss’s son, and dealing with a disreputable nephew who has become part of his household. “Girlfriend” examines romantic complications among a group of newly divorced people. In “Venus in Fur,” a man comes to realize that his girlfriend loves her dog more than she loves him. The latter story is based partly on Gianopoulos’s experience and centers on “what he considers a uniting theme of the book: envy,” reported Agatha French in the Los Angeles Times. She explained: “His wife, actress and writer Molly Ringwald, once owned a Pomeranian so adorable that it was constantly stopped and fawned over like a celebrity.” Ringwald, he told French, is the first reader of all his stories. “Very often, she’ll have a great insight,” he said.
Some commentators found the stories in How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money both insightful and entertaining. “Venus in Fur,” for instance, “nails the infantilizing speech of a doting dog owner … as well as a man’s increasing jealousy,” French related. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the volume “a wonderful collection … combining wry humor, engaging characters, and shrewd psychological insight.” It is, the critic concluded, “witty, discerning, and laugh-out-loud funny.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Brooklyn Rail, February, 2013, Larissa Zimberoff, review of A Familiar Beast, p. 62.
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2017, review of How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money.
Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2017, Agatha French, “Presenting His Debut Collection, Panio Gianopoulos Is Funny and Disarming at Skylight Books.”
ONLINE
Four Way Books Website, https://fourwaybooks.com/ (May 16, 2018), brief biography.
Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (December 3, 2012),Teddy Wayne, interview with Panio Gianopoulos.
It’s Either Sadness or Euphoria, http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/ (January 7, 2013), review of A Familiar Beast.
James River Writers, https://jamesriverwriters.org/ (May 16, 2018), interview with Panio Gianopoulos.
Literary Aficionado, http://literaryaficionado.com/ November 19, 2012, Grady Harp, review of A Familiar Beast.
Los Angeles Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/ (May 16, 2018), brief biography.
Melissa MacEwen Website, https://melissamacewen.wordpress.com/ (May 16, 2018), “Gianopoulos’ Debut Novella, A Familiar Beast, Is Poignant, Bitterly Precise.”
Panio Gianopoulos Website, http://paniogianopoulos.com (May 16, 2018).
Quiet Revolutionaries, https://www.quietrev.com/ (April 20, 2018), excerpt from How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money.
Panio Gianopoulos is the author of the story collection, How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money, and the novella, A Familiar Beast.
His stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in Tin House, Northwest Review, Salon, The Rattling Wall, Chicago Quarterly Review, Big Fiction, The Brooklyn Rail, Catamaran Literary Reader, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Non-Fiction, he has been included in the anthologies The Bastard on the Couch, Cooking and Stealing: The Tin House Non-Fiction Reader, and The Encyclopedia of Exes.
He lives in New York with his wife and three children.
Photo: Molly Ringwald
Photo: Molly Ringwald
Interviews & Profiles
OPEN BOOK podcast
Between tHe covers podcast
OTHERPPL w/Brad listi podcast (2017/How to get into our house...)
LOS ANGELES Times
Salon
91.5 FM: “Greeks are the happiest sad people I know”
James River Writers
The Aesthete
The Huffington POST
OTHERPPL w/Brad listi (2013/a familiar beast)
Contact
Literary agent: markus[at]regal-literary.com
General inquiries: heypanio[at]gmail.com
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Panio Gianopoulos
Panio Gianopoulos is the author of the novella A Familiar Beast (Nouvella Books, 2012). A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, his writing has appeared in Tin House, Northwest Review, The Hartford Courant, The Brooklyn Rail, FiveChapters, and The Rattling Wall, among others. He lives in Los Angeles.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
Wild at Heart
April 10, 2015
Panio Gianopoulos talks to Christian Kiefer about his new novel....
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WHAT CHARLES YU DOES VERY WELL — it is a long list, but this may be its most notable entry — is to ...
Panio Gianopoulos
Panio Gianopoulos is the author of the story collection How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money (Four Way Books, 2017) and the novella, A Familiar Beast (Nouvella, 2012), an Amazon Best Book of the Month. His writing has appeared in Tin House, Northwest Review, Salon, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Big Fiction, and elsewhere; he is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for nonfiction literature. He received his B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and his M.B.A. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Currently the Editorial Director of Heleo, Panio Gianopoulos lives with his family in New York.
How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money
Panio Gianopoulos
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The Dirty Truth About Kids’ Health: What We Get Wrong About Cleanliness
Panio Gianopoulos on LinkedIn
Publish date October 26, 2016
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Mastering the Art of Pre-Suasion: A Conversation with Robert Cialdini, Godfather of Influence
Panio Gianopoulos on LinkedIn
Publish date September 14, 2016
September 14, 2016
Experience
Heleo
Co-Founder, VP Content, VP Finance
Company Name Heleo
Dates Employed Oct 2015 – Present Employment Duration 2 yrs 7 mos
Location New York, NY
• Curate in-depth conversations between leading thinkers and writers in a range of disciplines, from science to business, healthy living to the arts.
• Lead in-house editorial team commissioning, writing, and editing insightful original content.
• Work with social media management and audience development team to optimize content mix, articles, and social media posts.
• Strategize with bestselling nonfiction authors to innovate editorial properties and generate new revenue streams.
Palindrome Media
Co-Founder & Creative Director
Company Name Palindrome Media
Dates Employed Apr 2011 – Jan 2013 Employment Duration 1 yr 10 mos
Location Greater Los Angeles Area
• Co-founded Palindrome, LLC, an e-book and interactive app production company
• Created the Palindrome business model, successfully raised $500K in financing
• Performed extensive market research, leveraging large and abstract datasets to provide easily understandable and actionable insights for marketing campaigns and story development
• Directed story and character creation for books and television shows. Managed teams of over twenty writers, editors and illustrators to create original novels and picture books
• Developed, published and e-published over 8 novels and 17 children’s books under the Backlit Fiction and Cherry Tree imprints
• Formed production partnership with Happy Madison Productions
• Led design, build and test of interactive children’s apps, focusing on child development and user experience. Managed a team of four designers and three engineers to complete design and development, launched across iOS, Android and Kindle Fire
The Boston Consulting Group
Management Consultant
Company Name The Boston Consulting Group
Dates Employed Jun 2009 – Aug 2009 Employment Duration 3 mos
Location Greater Los Angeles Area
• Facilitated in revision of organizational structure for client’s move to shared services model, focused on broadening spans of control and delayering.
• Researched and developed Service Level Agreements and charge-back mechanisms.
• Designed common performance management evaluation system to span multiple divisions.
• Analyzed survey data measuring service capabilities and developmental gaps, leveraged insights to refine client strategy and initiatives.
Bloomsbury USA
Editor
Company Name Bloomsbury USA
Dates Employed Jul 1999 – Jun 2007 Employment Duration 8 yrs
Location Greater New York City Area
• Personally edited 20 nonfiction and fiction titles/yr, coaching and line-editing a range of new and established authors, including bestsellers Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential), Chelsea Handler (My Horizontal Life), Daniel H. Wilson (How to Survive a Robot Uprising), and Patrick McGrath (Ghost Town), among others
• Formed and led a 7-person, cross-departmental team to design and produce all aspects of our first bestselling cookbook (Les Halles Cookbook, 200,000 HC copies sold)
• Helped grow starting imprint from 20 to 80 annual titles by commissioning projects and originating concepts
• Composed copy for covers and jackets, sales materials, catalogs, magazine and newspaper ads
• Managed serial rights division, selling excerpts to The New Yorker, Parade and others
TALK Magazine
Assistant Editor
Company Name TALK Magazine
Dates Employed Jan 1999 – Jul 1999 Employment Duration 7 mos
Location Greater New York City Area
Education
Stanford University Graduate School of Business
Stanford University Graduate School of Business
Degree Name MBA
Field Of Study Business Administration and Management, General
Dates attended or expected graduation 2008 – 2010
University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Degree Name B.A.
Field Of Study English
Dates attended or expected graduation 1993 – 1997
Activities and Societies: Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Departmental Honors in English, Commonwealth Honors Academic Scholarship
Skills & Endorsements
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Pablo Yablon
Pablo Yablon
Mailbox Rental Service at Mailboxes Postal Center
February 1, 2012, Panio was a client of Pablo’s
Pablo is great. Reliable, organized, and personable. In two years I haven't had a single issue or complaint with his mailbox service. Highly recommended!
Accomplishments
Panio has 2 languages 2
Languages
French Greek
Panio has 2 publications 2
Publications
How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money A Familiar Beast
Interests
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Stanford University
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LinkedIn Footer Content
LinkedIn
Quoted in Sidelights: Writing is a grind—slow and clumsy, full of false starts, missteps, and obstacles—but once in a while, suddenly everything gets out of your way and you take off, racing along the page,” he told an interviewer at the James River Writers Web site. “When that happens it feels like you’re driving a getaway car.”
Panio Gianopoulos
Panio Gianopoulos
Panio Gianopoulos is the author of the story collection, How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money and the novella, A Familiar Beast. His writing has appeared widely and he is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for nonfiction literature. He lives in New York. Website: paniogianopoulos.com
Conference Events
Saturday panels: Writing Authentically; Social Media
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The 2017 JRW Interview
What was your favorite book as a child?
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. I was obsessed by this story of a boy teaching himself how to survive in the Catskill Mountains all on his own. Spare, vivid, and surprisingly unsentimental, it made me want to run away from home and live inside of a hollowed-out tree, too. If you could teach a falcon how to retrieve pepperoni pizza, I might have gone for it.
What’s your favorite book as an adult?
The Stories of John Cheever. Whenever I need inspiration, I reread Cheever. His sentences are breathtaking. The last paragraph of “Goodbye, My Brother” is one of the best endings of any story—and partly responsible for my wife and I meeting and falling in love.
Do you have a favorite sentence or character?
“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.” ― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day
What’s the best/worst part about being an author?
The best part is when the writing is going well. Writing is a grind—slow and clumsy, full of false starts, missteps, and obstacles —but once in a while, suddenly everything gets out of your way and you take off, racing along the page. When that happens it feels like you’re driving a getaway car. Sure, you’ll probably get caught eventually, but for now you just go go go, as fast as you can, and don’t look back.
The worst part is that it’s never as clean or true or bright on the page as it is in my mind. Maybe poetry can achieve that pure, perfect state, but in my experience, stories, essays, and certainly novels, always feel to me like shadows of the version in my head.
What books are currently on your nightstand?
Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin
Hypothermia by Tim Fitts
Who Is Rich? by Matt Klam
Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim
Made for Love by Alissa Nutting
What is the elevator pitch for your latest book?
How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money is a collection of stories about women and men making entertaining messes of their lives. Whether it’s a bizarre love triangle, like “Venus in Fur,” about a man who desperately loves a woman who desperately loves her tiny little dog, or a funny family clash, like “I’ll Be Your Fever,” about a single dad and his demanding young daughter butting heads on a school camping trip—these characters find themselves tripping, sometimes painfully, sometimes hilariously, toward self-revelation.
What are you working on next?
A novel about a Greek-American family. The book spans three generations, from the parents’ immigration to the U.S. in the early 1960s to today, the three adult children now scattered to different parts of the country and raising their own families. When their mother’s injury brings them all back to Athens, it reignites old conflicts and dredges up buried family secrets.
Quoted in Sidelights: “a wonderful collection … combining wry humor, engaging characters, and shrewd psychological insight.” It is, the critic concluded, “witty, discerning, and laugh-out-loud funny.”
Gianopoulos, Panio: HOW TO GET
INTO OUR HOUSE AND WHERE
WE KEEP THE MONEY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 15, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Gianopoulos, Panio HOW TO GET INTO OUR HOUSE AND WHERE WE KEEP THE MONEY Four Way (Adult Fiction) $17.95 9, 5 ISBN: 978-1-945588-02-0
A wonderful collection of nine stories combining wry humor, engaging characters, and shrewd psychological insight.It's hard to pick a favorite here, but one of the best (and funniest) stories is "Love and Heuristics," in which a man named Jonah, both hapless and clueless, can't figure out why he can't keep a girlfriend--especially since he's thrifty enough to buy Valentine's candy a day late at 50 percent off (which he gives to his current girlfriend on Feb. 15) and won't give flowers because "they just die." In other words, he doesn't have a romantic bone in his body--and things get even worse when he starts to rely on advice about women from the office Lothario. The story that gives the book its title introduces us to Ethan, who finds himself drawn to Maggie, the girl next door and his daughter's swimming teacher. Unfortunately, everything starts to go wrong in Ethan's life: the position he wanted has been filled by the 27-year-old son of the company's CEO, and Ethan's nephew, Scudder, a graffiti artist ("Yo, it's not vandalism. It's freedom of expression"), comes to live with them, with comic--and almost dire--consequences. "Girlfriend" focuses on the culture of the recently divorced. While Hannah "seethes" at men in general, she does show some nominal interest in Nicholas when she meets him picking up his children at school: "he was not bad looking, in the simplistic way that any man could be acceptable if you were angling for competence." But it turns out Nicholas is far more interested in Joyce, Hannah's mother. And in yet another thwarted love relationship, in "Venus in Fur," the woebegone George confirms what he always suspected--that his love for Helen can never compete with Helen's for Millie, her Pomeranian. Witty, discerning, and laugh-out-loud funny.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Gianopoulos, Panio: HOW TO GET INTO OUR HOUSE AND WHERE WE KEEP THE
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MONEY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com /apps/doc/A500365013/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=57b61025. Accessed 19 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500365013
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Quoted in Sidelights: “Gianopoulos’s exacting prose had me re-reading lines and laughing along with the narrator–even in his misery.”
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The relativity of small (or, the affairs of
men): two novellas
Larissa Zimberoff
The Brooklyn Rail.
(Feb. 2013): p62. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2013 The Brooklyn Rail, Inc. http://www.brooklynrail.org
Full Text:
Panio Gianopoulos, A Familiar Beast (NOUVELLA, 2012) | Carissa Halston, The Mere Weight of Words (AQUEOUS BOOKS, 2012)
Stories of male infidelity have been around since the first recorded narratives, and we continue to find new ways to tell them. Here from the small press universe are two novellas, each compelling tales of complicated relationships, which succeed in different ways.
A Familiar Beast by Panio Gianopoulos (Nouvella Press) is just a little bigger than a passport, but the design elements--a heavy, seemingly impervious cover and an illustration of giant deer antlers cupped around the title--are metaphorical pointers to the rigors of daily life.
On page one we meet Marcus, set adrift after cheating on his pregnant wife with a coworker at his father-in-law's structural engineering firm. He knows not what to do nor how to carry on. We learn of Marcus' indiscretion via former friends, who are forced to take sides in a battle of the sexes that Marcus has clearly lost. With nowhere to turn, our disgraced narrator laments those who "leaked their derision like potted plants overfilled by amateur gardeners." Gianopoulos's exacting prose had me re-reading lines and laughing along with the narrator--even in his misery.
Much of the action is centered on a visit with Edgar, an old high school friend Marcus looked up online, having succumbed to another weakness: "ravenous algorithms that [run] on nostalgia and curiosity." The two men, both equally off-course, ramble around a vast, empty house, head to bars to pick up women, and talk about going hunting. When I arrived at the top of the last page I slowed down to a crawl, wishing it wasn't over.
The second novella, with a similarly afflicted narrator, comes to us from New Orleans based Aqueous Books. The Mere Weight of Words, by Carissa Halston, is the story of Meredith, or as we're asked to call her: Mere, a nickname not to be pronounced like the name Meredith but like the word: mere. The opener to the novella has you at the core of the story instantly:
I learn of my father's condition online. While reading the Arts and
Leisure section of the Times, I see a thumbnail-sized photo of him
appear in the side bar: Notable Filmmaker Suffers from Alzheimer's
Disease
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With that sinking weight of awful news I was hooked, ready to join Mere on her journey to visit her estranged father and wanting to learn more about their fractured father-daughter relationship. Through this visit Mere relives her teenage years (fights with her overbearing father about her career goals and his expectations), college (Mere rejects the arts to become a linguist), and her father's final cliche of male collapse (his frequent cheating on her mom).
Halston's writing begins strong and her sentences, short and punchy, work to let us into the narrator's crippled world. But the story is soon mired in opacity. When our narrator is afflicted by a strange condition, which we don't learn the name of until pages later, she doesn't go to the hospital but decides to sleep, then, awakening hungry, she drinks "dank water" and "[eats] from unwashed plates." Mere is bent on trying to find the right words, but ultimately stops sharing lucid thoughts with either the reader or the other characters in the book. Father and daughter barely speak to each other and this seems to translate to what the reader learns: very little. Our narrator sums up her method of life succinctly in the early pages: "I preferred to do nothing. Or everything. Or both. I refused to make a decision."
In The Mere Weight of Words I wanted to get deeper into the characters' heads; instead I was faced with a complexity that covered rather than revealed. As though I were reading an English romance where the main characters don't profess their love until you're screaming at the screen, I felt myself wanting to yell at Mere, begging her to reveal what was in her mind. But really, is that much different than in real life?
These two novellas finely demonstrate the form's potential, which allows for stories that are affecting enough to finish in one sitting or strong enough to read twice.
Zimberoff, Larissa
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Zimberoff, Larissa. "The relativity of small (or, the affairs of men): two novellas." The Brooklyn
Rail, Feb. 2013, p. 62. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A350336504/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=b9336450. Accessed 19 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A350336504
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Quoted in Sidelights: “Marcus is on a journey of self-discovery, and a journey like this takes some time,” Gianopoulos told Huffington Post online interviewer Teddy Wayne, explaining why we wrote A Familiar Beast as a novella rather than a short story. “It can’t be rushed. Not that he completes his journey by any means, but A Familiar Beast covers what one might call his first insight.” Marcus, the author noted, has done some despicable things, “but he’s not walking away unscathed.”
Interview With Panio Gianopoulos, Author of A Familiar Beast
By Teddy Wayne
Panio Gianopoulos is the author of A Familiar Beast (Nouvella Books). A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, his writing has appeared in Tin House, Northwest Review, Salon, The Hartford Courant, The Brooklyn Rail, FiveChapters, and The Rattling Wall, among others. I spoke with the Los Angeles-based author about why he chose the novella form, the likeability of his protagonist, and what draws him to quiet, subtle stories.
How would you describe A Familiar Beast to someone who hasn’t read it?”
A Familiar Beast is the story of Marcus, a man recently disgraced and reeling from divorce, as he searches for redemption. Out of desperation and loneliness, he goes on a hunting trip with a friend he hasn’t seen since high school, and the book follows their strange and darkly comic weekend.
Your protagonist, Marcus, is a man who should be easy to hate, yet despite having an affair while his wife is pregnant he remains sympathetic and, in fact, easy to relate to. Were you ever concerned that your audience wouldn’t be on his side?
I did worry about it a bit, about losing the audience’s sympathy or, at least, its open-mindedness. Marcus is a mess — he’s acted selfishly, carelessly, desperately — and in many ways he’s been a mystery to himself. I think the sincerity of his confusion and the depth of his remorse soften him. And he is wounded. Yes, he’s perpetrated some cruel and unwise things, but he’s not walking away unscathed.
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Photo credit: Molly Ringwald
Why did this story feel most at home as a novella instead of as a novel or a short story?
I liked it as a novella because the form offers the emotional breadth of a novel with the economy and quick pacing of a short story. I wanted to give Marcus the room to reflect, to stumble and to squirm, to crash into other characters like Edgar and MaryAnne and deal with the unusual consequences — but also to keep the pacing taut and a dramatic end in sight. Additionally, Marcus is on a journey of self-discovery, and a journey like this takes some time. It can’t be rushed. Not that he completes his journey by any means, but A Familiar Beast covers what one might call his first insight.
Your writing falls in the realm of quiet-but-seething domestic drama. What about these stories and situations draw you in a way that louder, more pulse-pounding ones don’t?
I’ve certainly written characters and stories that were more extreme, more volatile and loud, but it’s true that I have a predisposition for the quiet, desperate burn. I like when tension comes from within — Faulkner’s “human heart in conflict with itself” — and I also like to slice away at a relationship that seems fine to reveal the bloody torn muscle underneath. I remember, as a teenager, when I first read Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, I was in a state of orgiastic disbelief at the frustration and the contempt underneath the surface. The challenge, of course, is to find the pain without forgetting the tenderness and love that once accompanied it. It’s so easy to turn a domestic drama into a series of indignant screeds. When Marcus thinks back on his failed marriage, it’s the moments of kindness that twist the knife the most, the awareness of what he’s lost.
MaryAnne would probably be considered a minor character in the scheme of Marcus’ life, but she sticks with you as a reader. She’s brutal, and it’s hard to determine if she’s brave or cowardly. Can you talk about the process of creating her character?
I brought MaryAnne into the story with an intellectual intention — she was supposed to be a punishing stand-in for Marcus’s wife, who drops out of the story early on — but then I really liked her and wanted to see more of her. I rearranged things to allow her re-entry and was glad that I did, as the conversation she has with Marcus in the diner felt, to me, like an important moment of disclosure for both characters. It shows Marcus’s dangerous longing to be admired, as well as the hapless moral masochism in which he’s engaged; and it shows MaryAnne’s self-defeating unwillingness to soften. I thought she might give in at one point, open her heart a little. I even briefly toyed with the idea of having her and Marcus end up together, but it was so anti-MaryAnne I couldn’t even write it as a test. She is not a happy-ending girl.
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Follow Teddy Wayne on Twitter: www.twitter.com/teddywayne1999
Quoted in Sidelights: “Gianopoulos is such a polished wordsmith that he seems to be emerging from the likes of the great authors of the past and the present,” observed Grady Harp at the Literary Aficionado Web site. “His prose is economical, eloquently phrased, and rich in detail while at the same time not drawing attention to the art of writing but instead using that gift to sculpt characters and emotions that burn through the pages and into our memories.”
A Familiar Beast
Posted on November 19, 2012 by Literary Aficionado
Debut Novella by Panio Gianopoulos – Brilliant!
By Grady Harp
In a very small, compact but beautifully designed (by Daniel D’Arcy) limited edition book from Nouvella Books we are introduced to an author of such penetrating talent that he likely will become one of the more important novelists of our time. Rarely has a brief but thoroughly complete novella created characters of such dimension that they seem almost visible sitting in a chair opposite the reader, telling their story. Gianopoulos is such a polished wordsmith that he seems to be emerging from the likes of the great authors of the past and the present. His prose is economical, eloquently phrased, and rich in detail while at the same time not drawing attention to the art of writing but instead using that gift to sculpt characters and emotions that burn through the pages and into our memories.
Marcus lives in San Jose and we gather form the first two pages just how lost a soul he is: his job is going nowhere, his marriage to a controlling woman has just ended, the reason apparently being his infidelity with Alice while his wife Sharon was pregnant, and with the couples crumbled marriage fraying into decisions about which friends will side with whom, Marcus decides to fly to North Carolina to visit his old friend Edgar whose life includes living in a spacious but cold house and who is more interested in being a conquering hero with women than in being honest about relationships. Marcus brings along his large baggage of regret and sense of interminable isolation – and little else. Edgar’s once blooming good looks reveal the signs of premature aging and angst. Together they forge into the local pubs where they meet the only two women who don’t distance themselves: Harriet goes to Edgar while the cold MaryAnne allows Marcus to unravel his life of failed relationships and experiences – and it is the time we spend with these four characters that we understand so many of the jarring barricades that beset interpersonal relationships that chew away at al of us in this internet age.
Edgar is a hunter – a deer hunter: Marcus cannot imagine killing anything on purpose. But Edgar insists on the two traveling out on an early morning hunt – to bond more closely. It is this preoccupation with hunting and the similarities to the men’s lives that provide some of the more probing moments in this book. Marcus’ first encounter with a knife: ‘The rosewood handle was warm and smooth in his palm. He unfolded the blade with a curl of his thumb, feeling the shift in balance, the new extended danger. It was a longer blade than he expected, pale and serrated, featuring a curve as discreet and elegant as the line of a woman’s neck as she arches to show her indifference.’ And a bit later Marcus is able to address his visit to Edgar’s house: ‘He had long since learned to substitute the indirect praise of objects for direct sentiment when expressing affection with men. He did it without even being aware of it, and now, believing the substitution to be true sentiment, Marcus defended the house when Edgar told him that he intended to sell it once the market turned around. “You don’t just give up a place like this. With that yard, and animals coming in to visit?” “It’s a family house,” Edgar said. “Do you see a family?”
There is an incident that occurs with Marcus and without disclosing that, Marcus’ response deserves sharing: “he was tired of facing things. Hadn’t he done enough of that lately? If he was destined to a lifetime of mistakes, could he not be permitted, at least, the slight mercy of ignorance?” He continues to face a familiar beast.
Perhaps this is a review of adoration too seldom felt on reading a first novel. But the unmitigated pleasure of reading an artist such as Panio Gianopoulos sets a new standard of excellence in literature. And for a debut novella, that is astonishingly rewarding.
Grady Harp, November 2012
TITLE: A FAMILIAR BEAST
AUTHOR: PANIO GIANOPOULOS
PUBLISHER: NOUVELLA BOOKS
ISBN: 9780983658566
[AMAZONPRODUCTS asin=”0983658560″]
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Quoted in Sidelgiths: “what he considers a uniting theme of the book: envy,” “His wife, actress and writer Molly Ringwald, once owned a Pomeranian so adorable that it was constantly stopped and fawned over like a celebrity.” “Very often, she’ll have a great insight,” he said.
“nails the infantilizing speech of a doting dog owner … as well as a man’s increasing jealousy,”
Presenting his debut collection, Panio Gianopoulos is funny and disarming at Skylight Books
Agatha French
By Agatha French
Nov 13, 2017 | 5:45 PM
Presenting his debut collection, Panio Gianopoulos is funny and disarming at Skylight Books
Panio Gianopoulos at Skylight Books. (Agatha French / Los Angeles Times)
After turning 40, what he refers to "the bucket list age," writer Panio Gianopoulos decided to see a vocal coach.
He wasn't able to project, he said into a microphone at Skylight Books on Friday night, where he was warming up the small crowd who'd arrived to hear him read from "How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money," his debut collection of short stories.
"'Physiologically, you're fine,'" he recalled the coach telling him. "You're just trailing off." The coach advised him to "commit to the entire sentence" or else say nothing.
"Now, I barely talk to anyone," joked Gianopoulos. "It's like the Tom Hanks movie 'Cast Away.' " He does, however, commit to his sentences on the page.
A former editor at Bloomsbury, Gianopoulos spoke quite clearly throughout the event. A table held the standard offerings of wine and water crackers, plus a little something extra. "At the risk of turning this into dinner theater," Gianopoulos said, "we did bring pie." Those there settled into their seats with slices of banana cream, apple crumb and cherry pie.
Gianopoulos read from his story "Venus in Furs," a fresh take on the love triangle trope, revolving around what he considers a uniting theme of the book: envy.
"He recognized her instantly as an adversary," Gianopoulos began, priming the audience from the first sentence for a romantic rivalry. The conflict in "Venus in Furs," however, turns out not to be man versus man, but man versus beast. The adversary in question is a Pomeranian named Millie, the true object of the woman's affection and a thorn in the narrator's side.
The story nails the infantilizing speech of a doting dog owner — "Who took a bath!...Who smells like oranges!" — as well as a man's increasing jealousy. Gianopoulos' story turned on small revelations and got a number of laughs. "I'm just going to write stories that I would tell a friend," he said.
Gianopoulos admitted transforming personal experience for his fiction: his wife, actress and writer Molly Ringwald, once owned a Pomeranian so adorable that it was constantly stopped and fawned over like a celebrity.
"Everyone would stare at the dog," ignoring his famous wife entirely, an amusing reversal that in some oblique way entered the writing of "Venus in Furs." In 2017, Gianopoulos joked, "this dog would have an Instagram account and I would have a therapist."
Although "How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money" has only two stories with female protagonists, Gianopoulos was sensitive to the construction of his female characters — "I didn't want to get it wrong." He sought feedback from his wife, who is his first reader. "Very often, she'll have a great insight," he said, or at the very least offer, "You didn't do anything too embarrassing."
"How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money" by Panio Gianopoulos.
"How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money" by Panio Gianopoulos. (Four Way Books)
agatha.french@latimes.com
@agathafrenchy
How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money
By Quiet Revolution
An excerpt from “I’ll Be Your Fever” from How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money (c) 2017 by Panio Gianopoulos. Appears with the permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.
It was getting harder and harder to bring Stella to weddings. With each ceremony, she had grown wilder, and once-mischievous behavior had advanced to recklessness, unruliness, and outright vandalism. Three weeks ago, at the Penn-Watson wedding, Ted had caught her scrawling her name on the side of the wedding cake with her fingernail, and only by chance had he been able to sneak her out of the room and smooth out the fondant without anyone noticing.
“What were you doing?” he demanded, while she leaned sullenly against the banister of the rented Mission Revival house, the toe of her golden shoe driving into the clay tile floor.
“I was bored,” Stella replied, pushing off the banister with her palms. She used the momentum to turn a lazy pirouette.
“I asked you to wait for me for ten minutes, fifteen tops, and then I’d—” he stopped short as she completed a second pirouette, the bright California sunlight slicing through the banister to slash her back with criminal stripes. “Your dress! What did you do to it?”
“I was on the hill,” Stella said, smoothing down the lattice hem with both hands.
“It’s covered in grass stains. The whole back is—I don’t even know if a dry cleaner can get this out.”
Stella raised her chin and gazed at him, her pale eyes luminous with defiance.
“They don’t need to.”
“Stella . . .”
Her petite nostrils flared. “I like it like this.”
It was true. Stella didn’t believe in perfection. Nor restraint. Nor precaution, vigilance, and certainly not afterthought or regret. Stella believed in Stella, first and foremost, and it was for this reason that, on the morning of the Hayden-Waddell wedding, Ted intended to leave without informing her of his true destination. He had stashed his suit in the car the night before while she was asleep, and dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, he waved casually from the front door while Stella sat in the living room a few feet away, watching television and eating cereal with a pink plastic spoon.
“Kiss!” Stella demanded.
Dutifully, Ted lowered his head over the side of the couch. She encircled his head with her arms and crushed their faces together, breathing him in. He wiped the sugary milk-smear from his nose.
“Great. All set. If you, uh, need anything—” He motioned toward Juliza, who was sorting the laundry into color-coded piles in the hallway.
“You shaved,” Stella said.
“What?”
“You shaved,” she repeated. “You never shave on Saturdays.”
“What? That doesn’t—I shave whenever I feel like it,” Ted said and reflexively touched his smooth cheek with the back of his hand, begrudging its betrayal.
“You shave for weddings. Are you working today?”
“No, no, not . . . I have errands. Business errands. It’s not really work.” He shuffled backward to the door while she studied him, his hands raised high as if to demonstrate that he was unarmed. “Just watch your shows and I’ll see you in the afternoon.”
The moment he was outside, he heard Stella scramble around the L-shaped body of the couch. He ran to the car, searching his pocket for the keys and unlocking it in midstride. He hadn’t wanted to leave his camera, lenses, and gear overnight in a vehicle parked on the street, they were too valuable, but now he regretted his caution. He couldn’t photograph the wedding without his equipment, but if he ventured into the house to retrieve his bags, discreetly stashed in the coat closet just outside the living room, he would run into Stella.
He sat in the front seat, unsure of what to do. Maybe he could call a neighbor and ask him to pick up his bags and bring them out to his car. It was a simple enough request—
And then he saw her. She was skulking along the edge of the concrete pathway in bare feet and pajamas, her shoulders low, her head craned forward. From this angle, she looked tiny and slight, almost kittenish, nothing like the formidable adversary that shared his home.
Fighting back his guilt, he switched on the ignition, pressed his foot to the accelerator, and sped away. In the rearview mirror, he saw Stella’s head pop up. She held a hand to her eyes and squinted across the lawn of the apartment complex and out toward the road, searching for him, her darling, her beloved, her captive, her father.
Three blocks from the apartment, Ted pulled over and, cradling the phone in his palm, texted Juliza.
Please take Stella to the park now. I forgot my bags and need to get them from the closet.
A moment passed and then his phone sounded its joyful two-tone chime.
Y do u need yor bags?
For work.
I thot u wernt wurking!!! U sed u wernt wurking!!!
“Damn it,” Ted muttered, pressing his face into his hand and squeezing his temples with his thumb and ring finger. Somehow Stella had gotten hold of Juliza’s phone.
Y dint u tel me yor going!!! she texted.
It’s not a big deal, he wrote. I’m just helping Byron
I want to com!
I won’t have time to watch you there
Juleeza can com 2!
People can’t just go to weddings they have to be invited. I’m only going because I was hired
Not troo u want to go widout me
Don’t be
COM BAK AN GET ME
ridiculous
U DONT LUV ME
please understand
YOR THE WURST DADDY EVER
Ted dropped the phone onto the passenger-side seat to stop himself from replying. Stella’s anger had spilled over into a tantrum and no response, however reasonable, would bring it to an end. Only indifference was capable of quelling her indignation.
But first, it inflamed it. Every second, the chime sounded and another message appeared on his phone. For minutes, the screen remained floodlit as little blue dialogue boxes succeeded each other in hasty outrage and appeal, accumulating like pages of a manifesto.
When, at last, the outpouring had concluded, Ted retrieved the phone and scrolled through the messages. There were at least a hundred of them, exhausting in their repetition but inspired, he had to admit, in the variety of their emotional distortion. Stella also showed considerable imagination in her use of punctuation. While she clearly had no idea what a semicolon was for, it didn’t prevent her from stringing seven of them together, followed by a trio of fussy brackets and one desperate tilde.
He had waited so long to respond that the air in the car had grown warm and stale. Unrolling his window to let in a breeze, he heard a violent knocking sound coming from down the street. He peered through the windshield and saw a woman slamming the nose of a plastic stroller against the bottom step of a flight of stairs. She had taken her baby out of the seat and was balancing him with difficulty on her hip as she shoved the handlebar with her free hand. The rough, fitful motion caused the diaper bag to slide down from her shoulder and against the neck of her child, whose small face darkened like a peeled apple.
Ted unrolled his window and called out to her. “There’s a button on the underside!”
The woman continued to shove the handle as she rammed the stroller against the stair.
Ted unhooked his seat belt and leaned out the window. “Try the green button.”
When the mother didn’t respond, Ted got out of the car and walked over to her. She was older than he’d first thought, thirty-five, maybe forty, and her bitten fingernails were as ragged as movie ticket stubs. Sensing her uneasiness, and remembering that he was a stranger to her, he drew back a step.
“You have to press the green button,” Ted said.
“I already tried that,” she said.
“You have to do it while you rotate the handle. Press and then twist. Do you want me to?”
“No thanks,” she said, grimacing as she strained with the handle.
“Crank it like you’re revving a motorcycle.”
With an abrupt swoop, the stroller collapsed into itself, the handle tipping forward and folding into the back. The woman nearly fell over from the suddenness of the motion.
“Oh,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Sure. I had the same stroller when my daughter was a baby,” Ted said. “The big basket underneath is great for groceries, but it’s a drag to get the thing shut.”
She smiled, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners. It was nothing like the frustrated glare he’d received when he’d approached. But then the baby let out a mewling, fussy cry, and the woman’s mouth tightened. She seemed to be reminded, in that moment, of her wariness, reminded of those fearful, suspicious shards that embed themselves in a parent’s heart when a child is born.
He returned to the car and drove home for his equipment. An apologetic Juliza confronted him in the kitchen. “I sorry. I have no idea she take it!” Juliza was the fill-in babysitter while Stella’s regular babysitter was away on holiday. A short, plump Guatemalan in her fifties, Juliza worked during the week as the housekeeper for a married couple whose anniversary portrait Ted had shot. For the past few Saturdays, she had come to Ted’s, where she spent most of the time doing laundry, mopping floors, and otherwise ignoring Stella. Ted had a soft spot for Juliza because she reminded him of his mother, a tiny Greek immigrant with equally broken English and a knack for disappearing into housework.
Waving away her apology, he slipped the straps of the backpack over his shoulders and bunched the handles of the duffel bag in his fist. Then he yanked the duffel into the air and, supporting it on the palm of his other hand, carried it out to the car. After carefully arranging both bags in the trunk, he circled to the passenger side, where Stella was sitting in a white dress, her hands folded in her lap.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
“Stella . . .”
“I put on my dress.”
“I’m not supposed to bring anyone. Byron doesn’t want—”
“You can’t leave me! I don’t want to be alone all day.”
“You’re not going to be,” he said. “Juliza will be there with you.”
“That’s a kind of alone.”
“Life is a kind of alone.”
She turned her head, gazing up at him. The wide black seat belt looked like a strip of highway ripped up and laid against her chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s not true.”
He did not know if she believed him. She was seven years old, and what she thought of the world was a mystery to him.
“Fine,” he said, reaching across to close her door. “You can come with me. So long as you behave.”
About Quiet Revolution
Quoted in Sidelights: “wit underscores the novella’s pervasive anxiety and, as we laugh, we also wince in empathetic recognition.” She further noted that Gianopoulos “has complete control over his story, with the result that his calm, measured tone catches the reader off guard with its poignancy.”
Book Review: Gianopoulos’ debut novella, ‘A Familiar Beast,’ is poignant, bitterly precise
How can a person come to terms with his own failings? How can he move on from a crucial, life-changing mistake? Panio Gianopoulos’“A Familiar Beast” seeks to answer such questions through the character Marcus.
The novella’s plot is simple enough. We meet Marcus shortly after he splits with his wife, Sharon, in the wake of Marcus’ affair with a coworker. Desperate for friendship and human connection, Marcus visits the home of an old classmate, Edgar, at Edgar’s home in North Carolina. The two men decide to go on a hunting trip together. As the day of the hunt approaches, Marcus confronts himself, his relationships and his motivations for the affair, which leads to the tale’s startling, heart-wrenching conclusion.
This is by no means Gianopoulos’s first work — he has previously been published in Tin House and Northwest Review, among many other magazines — but “A Familiar Beast” is one of his first longer pieces. He has complete control over his story, with the result that his calm, measured tone catches the reader off guard with its poignancy. Marcus’s reflections are piercing because of, rather than in spite of, their simplicity — Gianopoulos’ power stems entirely from his plain-spokenness. Take, for example, Marcus’ reflection when he meets up with Edgar before dinner:
“He didn’t know what it was that tied him to it, what held him fast to this magical idea — even now, after all the pain it had caused recently — that a feeling could be pre-arranged, ordered in advance and then calmly anticipated. One day, surely, it would arrive, like a phone call from a long-absent lover, confiding I miss you, where are you, come home, please, come home.”
This blunt honesty also manifests as a consistent, tar-black humor that pervades the work from the novella’s opening line — “Sharon got the Harrisons” — the advice of MaryAnne, a woman that Marcus meets at a bar and who makes a damning observation that you don’t go to strangers for an unbiased opinion. Instead “You go to strangers for comfort. You go to strangers for sympathy and understanding and approval.” The wit underscores the novella’s pervasive anxiety and, as we laugh, we also wince in empathetic recognition.
Occasionally, Gianopoulos does stumble. A handful of awkwardly-worded descriptions pervade the piece and break the flow of his writing, such as when Marcus goes out drinking with Edgar: “To Marcus, who had wedged himself into the end of the pen-scarred wooden booth the way a newborn nestles into the corner of his crib at night, trying to forget that he is dreadfully exposed to life and all its harms, Edgar was a startling eruption of garrulousness and vitality.” The description makes a good point, but its language is somewhat clunky. Such errors are few and far between, and they gently remind the reader that though Gianopoulos is a master of his craft, he is still experimenting with a format that is somewhat new to him.
By and large, “A Familiar Beast” is hypnotic and chillingly precise. It is never ostentatious; instead, it builds slowly, observation by observation, gradually creating an atmosphere of paranoia so subtle that we are ensnared without question. By the time we the readers reach Marcus’ strange redemption at the end of the tale, we feel his pain and regret viscerally. We can only watch, transfixed, as he endures punishment for his mistakes. When he calls MaryAnnein a panic at the story’s climax, murmuring, “I don’t know how this happened … I don’t know what to do,” we empathize completely, but have no suggestions for him, either. By then, Gianopoulos has made infidelity and isolation our “familiar beast” through the husk-like Marcus.
“A Familiar Beast” will be released on Nov. 3 by Nouvella Publishing. Jewel-like in its precision, Gianopoulos’ novella will deserve all the praise it will reap.
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Quoted in Sidelights: “is a terrific writer and his use of language to convey emotions and events we’ve seen before is tremendously effective, and his storytelling really packs a punch in a short number of pages.”
It's Either Sadness or Euphoria...
Dispatches from my manic mind
Monday, January 7, 2013
Book Review: "A Familiar Beast" by Panio Gianopoulos
In the wake of an affair gone wrong, Marcus has destroyed both his marriage and his career. Unsure of what he wants in his future, and paralyzed by feelings of loss, guilt, and loneliness, he winds up agreeing to visit Edgar, a former classmate, in North Carolina. He and Edgar haven't kept in touch over the years, but thanks to the wonders of social media, they were able to reconnect, and even though he isn't particularly enthusiastic about traveling across the country, Marcus makes the trip.
He finds that Edgar's life isn't much different than his own, although Edgar avoids talking about his problems in the typically stoic way men do. Left on his own in Edgar's big, lonely house, Marcus has far too much time to brood over the wreck of his life and his marriage, and confronting how far off course his life has gone. An encounter with a woman at a bar in North Carolina leaves him feeling more bewildered, guilty, and angry about all that has happened.
When Edgar proposes taking Marcus on a deer hunt, he agrees, despite his revulsion for killing anything, which has been an effective enough buffer to help him avoid hunting to this point. As he ponders a way to disentangle himself from yet another situation he has found himself in, he confronts an even greater challenge.
Panio Gianopoulos' A Familiar Beast is billed as a novella, and from what I've read on Amazon about the actual physical book, it's apparently a beautifully printed, 72-page long text. However, on my Kindle, it feels more like a slightly longer short story. But whatever you call it, Gianpoulos does a phenomenal job creating a memorable character in a familiar but complicated situation. He is a terrific writer and his use of language to convey emotions and events we've seen before is tremendously effective, and his storytelling really packs a punch in a short number of pages.
I've always said that the mark of a terrific short story is when you're left thinking about the character(s) and wondering what happened once the story ended, plus you're invested enough to want to read more. This was definitely the case with A Familiar Beast, and I look forward to seeing what else Gianopoulos writes in what I believe is a tremendously promising career.