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WORK TITLE: The Senator’s Children
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1970
LC Authorities:
| 670 | __ |a Montemarano, Nicholas. A fine place, c2002: |b CIP t.p. (Nicholas Montemarano) data sheet (b. 1969) bk. (b. 1970) |
|---|
WEBSITE: https://www.nicholasmontemarano.com/
CITY: Lancaster
STATE: PA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Married with one son.
RESEARCHER NOTES: additional sketchwriter-supplied bios.
PERSONAL
Born c. 1970, in Brooklyn, NY; married; children: one son.
EDUCATION:Fairfield University, B.A., 1992; University of Birmingham, M.A., 1996; University of Massachusetts at Amherst, M.F.A., 2000.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Central Missouri State University, Warrensburg, faculty member, 2000; Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, professor of English, 2002–. Bennington College, speaker at Writing Seminars.
AWARDS:Pushcart Prize; fellow, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Edward F. Albee Foundation, MacDowell Colony, National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Yaddo.
WRITINGS
Work represented in anthologies, including Brief Encounters: An Anthology of Short Nonfiction, Norton, 2015; and The Best American Short Stories. Contributor of articles and short fiction to periodicals, including AGNI, DoubleTake, Esquire, Gettysburg Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Southern Review, Tin House, Washington Post, and Zoetrope: All-Story.
SIDELIGHTS
Nicholas Montemarano has spent most of his career in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he teaches creative writing at Franklin & Marshall College. He is a product of Brooklyn, however, and his background is reflected in some of his fiction. In fact, he told interviewer Tyler Barton at the Triangle, the cemetery in his Glendale neighborhood became a feature in the setting of his second novel. Other elements of his award-winning fiction are also based on historical people, places, and events.
A Fine Place
A Fine Place was inspired by the murder of a black teenager in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1989. Montemarano introduces the fictional Tony Santangelo as a Bensonhurst boy born and bred, who brings unwanted attention to his insular Italian-American community. Tony was involved in a gratuitous beating that ended in the death of the innocent victim, and he ended up in prison. Ten years after the killing, Tony is trying to rebuild his life while his extended family remains stuck in the ingrained memories and attitudes of the past.
This is not a story of redemption. Tony works as a security clerk, but his prospects are no rosier than they were in 1989. His dad still can’t keep a job, and his grandparents still bicker nonstop. The women of the family dote on Tony and anticipate his return to the fold with excitement, but nothing has changed–not the neighborhood, not the people. The memory of the killing and the racist attitudes behind it are alive and well in Bensonhurst, and Tony is a living victim of that legacy.
A Fine Place generated a modest amount of critical attention. A Kirkus Reviews contributor dubbed it “plodding, dull, and unappealing,” but others were more generous. A Publishers Weekly commentator noted that the nonlinear exposition and alternating narrators interfered with the story arc but succeeded in adding “layers of insight.” Jim Dwyer reported in Library Journal that A Fine Place offers “unflinching” and “powerful” testimony to a “close-minded neighborhood … wallowing in fear, anger, and racism.”
Montemarano followed his debut with If the Sky Falls, a collection of stories about people who are similarly “haunted by memories of violence and cruelty” they cannot understand or forget, according to a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. Despite the darkness, the critic commended Montemarano for rendering “brutality and abjection with ambiguity and subtlety while taking assured metafictional leaps.” What a Kirkus Reviews commentator found was a collection that exudes “not a speck of warmth.”
The Book of Why
Readers can find more warmth in The Book of Why. Eric Newborn is a self-help celebrity with books, speaking engagements, and media appearances under his belt. His upbeat pep talks have empowered people the world over with the dual message that there is a reason for everything and that nothing is impossible. The one person who seems beyond help is Eric himself.
When his beloved wife dies of a brain tumor, life as he knows it fades into memory. Eric retreats from view to live as a hermit on a secluded island at Martha’s Vineyard. He wallows in nostalgic reminiscences until the day of the accident, when he stops to help. The driver is a woman named Sam. She has come to the island to find him and seek his counsel, but she doesn’t recognize him in his diminished state. Their roles are reversed when Eric is injured and Sam becomes the healer. Her somewhat quirky New Age interpretation of her guru’s message leads him down a path that neither one expects.
A writer in Kirkus Reviews observed: “Eric’s poignant loss reminds us all of the fragility of relationships and of the hard truths we find difficult to face.” Montemarano created “a convincing portrait of a breakdown of faith and self-worth,” wrote a Publishers Weekly commentator, but reported that Eric’s subsequent road trip to recovery was “too overburdened with coincidences to be credible.” To Booklist contributor Cortney Ophoff, however, The Book of Why offers “a beautiful journey of self-discovery” in a “tale of love, grief, and promise.”
The Senator's Children
Montemarano was inspired to write The Senator’s Children while watching late-night television. A comedian was mocking a well-known politician who had recently been exposed as a philanderer. The man was presidential candidate John Edwards, and the scandal was an extramarital affair that resulted in the birth of a baby. The audience was laughing, but Montemarano was pondering the impact that the exposé and the subsequent ridicule would inevitably have upon his children and his wife, who happened to be dying after a long battle with breast cancer. He explores that question in The Senator’s Children.
The Senator’s Children is not the story of the Edwards family. Though it may seem to follow a similar trajectory, this is a purely fictional invention that enables the reader to explore the price paid by innocent children for the transgressions of their parents. The parents in Montemarano’s story are merely supporting actors in the Christie family tragedy.
In the year 1977 David Christie is a Philadelphia lawyer with a wife, son Nick, daughter Betsy, and a bright future ahead of him. In 1984 David is a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate when wife Danielle is the impaired driver in an automobile crash that kills her teenage son. David’s composure in the face of tragedy contributes to a victory at the polls, and a few years later he is poised to repeat his success at the national level. His hopes are dashed by media reports of his extramarital affair with a young campaign worker, followed by the undeniable evidence of a baby girl born a few months later. When the headlines fade into the media archives, so does David, leaving two children to grapple with the ramifications of his infidelity.
That is the linear version of the Christie family history but, as he has done in the past, Montemarano arranges the story in vignettes that appear in apparently random order from various points of view. It is a device that a Kirkus Reviews commentator described as “a little gimmicky,” but one that that allows Montemarano to place “strong, finely detailed characters … in interesting, if unrelentingly painful, situations.”
David reappears in the year 2010 in a nursing home, where he suffers from advanced Parkinson’s Disease and dementia. His wife died of cancer long ago, and Betsy has little use for the man who ruined her childhood. His love child Avery, now a teenager, is the one who visits the father who never acknowledged her and doesn’t recognize her now. One daughter grew up in the harsh glare of the spotlight, the other in oblivion, but their lives will eventually converge. In a New York Times review, Sarah Lyall observed: “It’s hard to look so deeply into other people’s lives that you really understand them,” but “that is what Montemarano has done here.” Stacy Shaw commented in Booklist: “Montemarano masterfully exposes the heavy truths that unravel a family, and magnifies the moments that define it.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 1, 2012, Cortney Ophoff, review of The Book of Why, p. 22; October 1, 2017, Stacy Shaw, review of The Senator’s Children, p. 29.
Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2001, review of A Fine Place, p. 1709; August 15, 2005, review of If the Sky Falls, p. 876; October 15, 2012, review of The Book of Why; September 1, 2017, review of The Senator’s Children.
Library Journal, February 1, 2002, Jim Dwyer, review of A Fine Place, p. 132.
New York Times, December 19, 2017, Sarah Lyall, review of The Senator’s Children, p. C6.
Publishers Weekly, January 7, 2002, review of A Fine Place, p. 47; August 15, 2005, review of If the Sky Falls, p. 30; October 29, 2012, review of The Book of Why, p. 30.
ONLINE
Author Interviews, http://writerinterviews.blogspot.com/ (December 27, 2017), Deborah Kalb, author interview.
Franklin & Marshall College Website, https://www.fandm.edu/ (May 11, 2011), author profile.
Nicholas Montemarano Website, https://www.nicholasmontemarano.com (May 11, 2018).
Triangle, https://www.thetrianglepa.org/ (June 23, 2014), Tyler Barton, author interview.
02 About
Nicholas Montemarano
was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Queens. His third novel, The Senator's Children, is now out from Tin House Books. His previous novels are The Book of Why and A Fine Place. His short story collection, If the Sky Falls, was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice. His stories have been published in Esquire, Tin House, Zoetrope: All-Story, and many other magazines. His fiction has won a Pushcart Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He is Professor of English at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, where he lives with his wife and son.
Nicholas Montemarano
Professor of English
717-358-4311
nicholas.montemarano@fandm.edu
Office: KEI300
Biography
Nicholas Montemarano's third novel, The Senator's Children, was recently published by Tin House Books. He is the author of two previous novels, The Book of Why (2013) and A Fine Place (2002), and a short story collection, If the Sky Falls (2005). His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House, The Southern Review, AGNI, The Gettysburg Review, DoubleTake, and many others. His fiction has been reprinted in The Pushcart Prize and cited as distinguished stories of the year in The Best American Short Stories four times. He has published nonfiction in The Washington Post Magazine, DoubleTake, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Brief Encounters: An Anthology of Short Nonfiction (Norton, 2015). He is the recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, the PA Council on the Arts, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
He is an alumnus of Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens (1988), Fairfield University (B.A. 1992), Binghamton University (M.A. 1996), and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (M.F.A. 2000).
The Triangle
https://www.thetrianglepa.org/2014/06/23/interview-with-nicholas-montemarano/
Interview with Nicholas Montemarano
Tyler BartonJune 23, 20141
photo1In Lancaster’s Chestnut Hill Cafe, a coolly comfortable shop on the city’s west end, author and Franklin & Marshall College professor Nicholas Montemarano tells me this is the place he often comes when he needs to get back to the basics. “If I hit a wall or something…if I need to get away from my computer…when I need to go back to writing longhand, I’ll come here,” he says. There’s the old cliche, a stereotype that truthfully applies to a fairly large number of us, that writers only write in coffee-shops. Normally the impetus for this is the atmosphere, the noise, the bustle, the setting which allows one to be within and without. For many, it’s the complimentary Wi-Fi. But for Montemarano, it is an escape from his computer, a return to the foundation of pen to paper, which he uses to break through a writing block.
And it’s been this way for twelve years now. Montemarano began working as a creative writing professor at F&M in 2002, shortly after the publication of his first book, a novel called A Fine Place (Context Books). After four years of commuting between Philly and Lancaster, he moved here. “It has really changed a lot. The arts community has grown tremendously,” he says.
Since receiving his MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2000, Montemarano has published three books. After his debut novel, his short story collection, If The Sky Falls, was published by Louisiana State University Press in 2005. Last year, his novel, The Book of Why, was published by Little Brown. When we sat down a few weeks ago to drink a cup of coffee and chat, Montemarano said he has also finished writing a new collection of short fiction.
His work, and especially his latest novel, tends to pull its tension and structure from plots and themes structured around death. I asked him whether or not he knew where this fascination stems from. He says, “It’s THE subject. This weird situation we find ourselves in, where we appear here, suddenly we’re alive, and then eventually we’re not. It’s the most mysterious, interesting, strange, and—it can be—anxiety-producing thing about life: that it ends.”
In Queens, where the author spent his childhood, his family lived in a neighborhood “surrounded by cemeteries.” He says with a laugh, “The joke is that there are more people buried in Glendale than there are living.” He grew up right around the corner from the same cemetery Harry Houdini is buried in. This setting became the childhood home The Book of Why‘s main character, self-help writer Eric Newborn, who “has this sort of death-obsession as well.”
“So, for sure, I think I have a preoccupation with [death]. Every day, when I open the Times, I turn first to two sections: Obituaries, and Books. Those are the two things I’m really interested in,” says Montemarano. I asked him if this lifelong rumination, this literary grappling with death has made him more anxious or prepared for his inevitable own. He says, “The thing that has moved me very slowly in the direction of death acceptance would be just simply getting older. Having a kid, life experiences—these things have moved me ever so slightly towards the side of acceptance of death. There are a couple of ways to look at death: there’s the anxiety of no longer being, or being here; that doesn’t really bother me as much anymore. The anxiety, for me, is separation from those you care about; that’s the anxiety of death… It’s more about separation and suffering, that’s what is a little bit harder to accept.”
Something that seems to bring all people towards a closer acceptance of their mortal fate is the practice of empathy, an act that Montemarano describes as the real joy of writing (or reading) fiction. In a recent article, the author says, “The most important reason I write stories, and read them, is to practice empathy.” I asked him to expand upon this idea of practicing empathy. He says, “That’s an opportunity we have, as writers. You get to try on the skin of other people through your made-up characters. I know that, for me, if at any point I start to feel that I’m standing above my characters, or I think I’m better than them or something, then I know I need to revise. I need to be able to feel empathy for them, no matter who they are.”
The problem with empathy, however, is that you can never fully know how another person, be they real or imagined, truly feels. We can interpret what we learn and observe about others through our own emotions and experiences, but it is never the same as living as that person. Trying on someone’s skin is not like actually having that skin, and Montemarano acknowledges this, trying hard to gain as complete an understanding of his characters and plights as possible.
For example, he’s currently writing about a character with Parkinson’s Disease. “I don’t know what it’s like to have Parkinson’s,” says Montemarano, “so I’ve been researching, reading books, memoirs.” For years, the author volunteered for hospice and spent time alongside patients who suffered from the disease. He says, “You have to try to find ways to more deeply inhabit that character’s skin.” Because, at the bottom of it, empathy is about recognizing that despite our myriad differences, people are fundamentally the same, which makes the anxiety of death a little bit lighter to carry. “Because,” as Montemarano says, “we’re all in the same boat, and I don’t want to live forever.”
photo1 (1)Special thanks to Nicholas for taking the time to do this interview with me,
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Author Interviews
http://writerinterviews.blogspot.com/2017/12/nicholas-montemarano.html
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Nicholas Montemarano
Nicholas Montemarano is the author of the novels The Book of Why (2013) and A Fine Place (2002) and the short story collection If the Sky Falls (2005).
His new novel is The Senator’s Children.
From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Senator's Children?
A: The initial impulse came when I was watching a late-night comedian lampoon a politician whose career had recently imploded in a very public way.
The audience's laughter just didn't sit well with me; it stirred a strong emotional response inside me, and that's something you need, I think, in order to undertake the long journey of writing a novel.
Because a novel can take years to write, and comes with setbacks and doubt, one thing you need—and can return to during the writing process—is a strong emotional response to something and a need to explore it further.
That joke, the audience laughing, and my feeling of sympathy for the politician and especially for his family, given what I assumed they were going through in private—that was the moment when the novel began inside me, before I'd written a word.
Q: The chapters jump around in time. Did you write them in the order in which they appear?
A: Not even close. It's hard for me even to remember the initial chronology. I have never written a novel in chronological order, so that's one thing I do know about the first draft—that it was certainly nonlinear.
Even after this novel was under contract and I was working with my editor, I ended up rewriting 150 pages. And part of that meant filling in gaps, taking further advantage of opportunities my editor pointed out to me.
I wrote many chapters late in the process and then inserted them in various places in the novel. I worked that way with all three of my novels, and I'm working that way now with a new novel I'm writing.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing?
A: I knew only that the senator's two daughters, Betsy and Avery, one from his marriage, one from outside his marriage, would, at some point late in the novel, collide.
But I definitely didn't know what I would end up doing in the final chapter. At some point along the way, as I wrote the first draft, I did know what would happen in that final chapter—that there would be a significant and surprising time jump—but I definitely didn't know before I started writing.
Q: Can you say more about why you decided to focus on a politician's family, and what you think the book says about the impact of politics on family members?
A: My decision to focus on a politician's family is probably a result of my seeing a fallen politician—a man who had become a pariah and for whom there would be no second act—joked about and laughed at.
The important part, as I see it, is that the character I wrote about was a public figure. Of course, as I got deeper into the novel, I became more and more interested in the nature of political scandals as a unique subcategory of celebrity scandals, with its own ramifications and fallout.
As David Christie, the senator in the novel, realizes: running for president is a sadomasochistic affair. Not only for candidates, but for their families. When you add to that a scandal, a public infidelity—that's when a family can fracture.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have a new short story collection that's complete. And I'm working on a new novel. I've written a draft and am now reworking it, changing a lot, the usual.
As much as I'd like to say more about it, I really believe—as many writers do—that when you speak about a work in progress, it can drain its battery. Suffice to say, this novel's spark was also an event that triggered an extremely strong emotional reaction in me—one that I keep returning to, and rely on, as I move deeper into the manuscript.
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Wikipedia
Nicholas Montemarano
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nicholas Montemarano (born 1970) is an American writer originally from Queens, New York. He is the author of three novels, The Senator's Children, The Book of Why, and A Fine Place, and the short story collection If the Sky Falls. His fiction has been published widely in magazines such as Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House, DoubleTake, The Gettysburg Review, The Antioch Review, The Southern Review, and AGNI.
Montemarano's first novel, A Fine Place, explored the aftermath of a racially motivated murder in Brooklyn. In "Truth in Fiction," an essay Montemarano published in DoubleTake magazine, he wrote about how the novel was inspired by the real-life murder of Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst in 1989. Jeffery Renard Allen, reviewing the novel in The Chicago Tribune, called A Fine Place "tight and well-crafted...small and transparent, like a paperweight, self-contained and compact, not a word wasted...a fine and important book."[1]
A New York Times review[2] of Montemarano's third novel, The Senator's Children, noted that the book was "based on the sad-but-true story of John Edwards." The reviewer, Sarah Lyall, compares The Senator's Children to Curtis Sittenfeld's Laura Bush-inspired novel, American Wife, saying that Montemarano "has humanized the Edwards story...with deftness and subtlety."
Montemarano's short story collection, If the Sky Falls, which the New York Times Book Review called "as dark and dazzling as a mine shaft studded with diamonds,"[3] was an Editors' Choice at the Book Review. One story in the collection, "The Worst Degree of Unforgivable," received a 2003 Pushcart Prize.
Montemarano has published nonfiction pieces in The Washington Post Magazine, DoubleTake, and the Los Angeles Times, all three dealing with issues of race.
He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.
Montemarano received his MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He teaches at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has also taught in the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Amazon.com
A Fine Place
Drawn from actual events, a dramatic debut novel, centered around the aftermath of the brutal death of Yusuf Hawkins, a black teenager, at the hands of a gang of young white men in 1989, follows Tony Santangelo, one of the young men responsible, as he tries to move on with his life after serving time in prison, while his family tries to deal with their own guilt and silence. 25,000 first printing.
GoodReads
In 1989 Yusuf Hawkins, a black teenager in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was chased by a gang of young white men, caught, and beaten to death. Rather than sensationalize the murder of Yusuf Hawkins, first-time novelist Nicholas Montemarano focuses on its aftermath: Tony Santangelo, one of those young men, must go on with his life after serving time in prison, just as his Italian-American family struggles with their own guilt and silence, with questions about Tonys involvement, and ultimately with their dying way of life. Moving back and forth in time, with direct and intense prose, Montemarano achieves a cumulative intensity the reader will not soon forget.
Amazon reviews:
Montemarano's book is more muted. He depicts the interior lives of mostly decent folk who are caught up in the frustrations and tedium of their neighborhood life. And yet, the explosion of violence which is the central event of the novel, does not come out of nowhere. All the more impressive is the fact that Montemarano weaves a tale, which is captivating, in spite of the quiet nature of the book. His greatest accomplishment is the character Vera, who is a fully realized elderly lady. Montemarano captures old age materfully, and judging by his picure he's not in his seventies, yet. Can't wait for his next one.
I had the privelage of being a student of Nick's in 2000 at Central Missouri State University. I think once in your educational career do you get that professor that changes your life. Nick is that kind of teacher. In my semester of class with him, he changed the way I looked at things. I was a formidable freshman at the time, and he set the tone for how great life can be. He really taught me to stop, look around, and describe what your senses are taking in. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to cross paths with him. This book displays his ability to get inside a characters head, and describe what they are feeling through all senses. It is a book about real people going through real problems. The in-depth analysis of these characters really allows us as the reader to see what they are seeing and feel what they are feeling. There is no gloss here, just real emotion and real feelings. I really believe that Nick ranks right up there with Palahniuk, Easton Ellis, and Hornby as my favorite authors in the last ten years.
The Trauma of a Political Scandal, Felt From the Inside
Sarah Lyall
The New York Times. (Dec. 19, 2017): Arts and Entertainment: pC6(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
Full Text:
At one point in ''The Senator's Children,'' the third novel by Nicholas Montemarano, we're inside the head of Betsy Christie, a high school senior. It's late at night and her parents are arguing, their voices rising and falling. Unable to sleep, Betsy turns on the television and sees a comedian ridiculing a presidential candidate who has lately been in the news for nonpolitical reasons, and who happens to be her father.
''You remember during his campaign, he was always talking about how there are two Americas,'' the comedian says. ''Well, no wonder: in one America he was faithful to his wife, and in the other America he was, in fact, banging his mistress.''
We feel complicit with the audience's laughter even as we imagine what it's like to be the daughter of a man whose life is imploding before the world's eyes. It's easy to find humor in the self-destruction of public figures. It's easy to ignore the collateral devastation when a governor (euphemistically) goes for a walk on the Appalachian Trail, a president invites a young intern into the Oval Office or a candidate takes an ill-conceived spin on a boat called ''Monkey Business.''
''The Senator's Children'' is based on the sorry-but-true story of John Edwards, the senator whose presidential aspirations were abruptly derailed in 2008 by an affair and whose disgrace was compounded by the subsequent news that the extramarital relationship had produced a child.
Much the way Curtis Sittenfeld dug deep into the psyche of a fictionalized version of Laura Bush, in her great novel ''American Wife,'' so Montemarano has humanized the Edwards story, allowing us to look far inside at people who had seemed merely to be supporting actors in the larger drama. But while Sittenfeld's novel was a tour-de-force study of one person, Montemarano shifts from character to character, addressing events in the round so we can experience the full extent of the havoc the senator has wrought.
The book begins in 1984. David Christie, a successful Pennsylvanian lawyer, is running for the Senate. After a campaign event at which his wife, Danielle, drinks too much, she crashes the car and kills their 16-year-old son, Nick. (The novel diverges from the real Edwards story in a number of ways, including this one: Edwards's son Wade also died in a car accident, but one in which Wade was driving.) Guilt and grief seep slowly through the family -- David, Danielle and then-10-year-old Betsy -- like a poison.
The book skips around in time and point of view, so you have to pay close attention to where you are and who you are with. Suddenly it is 2010, and a 17-year-old college freshman named Avery is preparing to visit a man with advanced Parkinson's who lives in a nursing home. Gradually we come to understand that the man is David, and that Avery is the result of his illicit liaison all those years ago.
Avery has suffered for the sins of her parents, even though, as an aide to David observes at one point: ''With all due respect, the baby didn't do anything wrong.'' Her mother is alone and a bit of a mess. Her father has never officially acknowledged her, and is now unable to comprehend who she is. Avery's obsession with David extends to an obsession with political scandals in general, which feels a bit heavy-handed but also makes sense. (Pondering the chasm between perception and reality in politicians, she makes an impassioned case for the grace and competence of Gerald R. Ford, a man who, thanks to Chevy Chase, will always be remembered as the sort of person who pours glasses of water into his ear and blows his nose into his tie.)
The past has a way of intruding on Avery's present. We get sad little snippets of what it must be like to be the love child of two people who were never in love, one of them a national figure. ''Her childhood home was often dark, the blinds drawn,'' Montemarano writes. ''Some days, after months of nothing, the bell would ring, a camera would flash, and her mother would slam the door.''
We also catch up with Betsy as a disaffected and anxious adult, engaged to an earnest and overly understanding man named Cal. Betsy overeats, has panic attacks, resents her father and misses her mother, dead from cancer like Edwards's wife, Elizabeth. She, too, struggles from an inability to make peace with the past.
<
The author brings pathos to everyone's life, but it's especially striking how much the adults -- Danielle, David and Rae, David's discarded mistress -- are punished for their misdeeds, ending up, respectively, dead, in the throes of dementia and alone. At heart the book is about the damage done to children by adults. In an affecting scene a year after Nick's death, Betsy is taken to meet the children's author Maurice Sendak, one of several real-life figures to appear in the narrative.
''Maybe children's book authors have a sixth sense for the hidden emotions of children,'' Betsy thinks. And then, of Sendak: ''He looked at her from behind his large glasses and said, 'Child' -- she remembers that word so clearly -- 'Child, it's okay to be sad. You won't always be.' ''
''The Senator's Children'' is at its most moving in its final chapter, which takes place in 1977 and is written from the point of view of Nick, the senator's son, who will go on to die seven years later. It's a glimpse into what this shattered family looked like when it was intact, and a poignant reminder that a short life is every bit as meaningful as a long one.
THE SENATOR'S CHILDRENBy Nicholas Montemarano369 pages. Tin House. $15.95.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTOS: Nicholas Montemarano (PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC FORBERGER)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lyall, Sarah. "The Trauma of a Political Scandal, Felt From the Inside." New York Times, 19 Dec. 2017, p. C6(L). General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A519380178/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5ddf4d6a. Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A519380178
4/23/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Print Marked Items
The Senator's Children
Stacy Shaw
Booklist.
114.3 (Oct. 1, 2017): p29.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Senator's Children. By Nicholas Montemarano. Nov. 2017. 376p. Tin House, paper, $15.95
(9781941040799).
After a family tragedy causes a surprising comeback in David Christies senatorial race, he pushes on for a
presidential run despite--or perhaps because of--the loss. However, this race and the decisions made during
it will come back to haunt him and his family, and prove their breaking point. Years later, Christie's two
daughters, one from his marriage and the other the result of an affair, are struggling to make sense of the
repercussions of that era when their father's declining health forces them to confront the past, and each
other. Montemarano [The Book of Why, 2013) tells Christie's family's story as a nonchronological
collection of moments. Points of deep loss are set against the day-to-day minutiae that form the backbone of
families: a hike, a bath, a moment crystallized in time. Often using only a glimpse of a character and a
dusky memory to shape the narrative, <
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Shaw, Stacy. "The Senator's Children." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2017, p. 29. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A510653748/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=62f13d83.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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Montemarano, Nicholas: THE
SENATOR'S CHILDREN
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Montemarano, Nicholas THE SENATOR'S CHILDREN Tin House (Adult Fiction) $15.95 11, 7 ISBN:
978-1-941040-79-9
A handsome, promising political candidate and his family are slammed by destiny and bad decisions.In
vignettes ranging from 1984 to 2010, Montemarano (The Book of Why, 2013) tells the story of David
Christie and his three children--two of whom have never met. It's a story with many dramatic and tragic
turns that would be undercut if revealed in a review, so restraint will be exercised here. When it begins,
Christie is running for a U.S. Senate seat from Pennsylvania, and his wife, Danielle, a theater professor at a
small college, and his 16-year-old son, Nick, a charming high school football player, are standing in for him
at a fundraiser in a mansion on Philadelphia's Main Line. Danielle is putting a good face on it, but she's sick
of the whole ordeal. "Soon, she kept thinking, we can go back to normal. She didn't like thinking that way,
she knew how David hated to lose, but double digits two weeks out--it would take a miracle." What
happens next can hardly be described as a miracle, but it will catapult Christie to victory, and by 1991 he
will be running against Bill Clinton and others for the Democratic presidential nomination. However, as this
section of the book is titled: "Mistakes Were Made." Montemarano's novel delivers <
the national-politics setting is a little thin and predictable, some key parts of the story are never fully
explained (when you finish it, tell us what happened in that car accident), and the creation of temporary
unsolved mysteries by jumping back and forth in time can feel <>.Though the author may
have bitten off more than he can chew here, his good instincts and courage make him a writer to watch.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Montemarano, Nicholas: THE SENATOR'S CHILDREN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502192274/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=aafe2df4. Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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The Book of Why
Cortney Ophoff
Booklist.
109.7 (Dec. 1, 2012): p22.
COPYRIGHT 2012 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Book of Why.
By Nicholas Montemarano.
Jan. 2013.304p. Little, Brown, $24.99 (9780316188470).
Eric Newborn was once a celebrated author and public speaker. His self-help books preached the power of
positive thinking and proclaimed the mind's ability to control absolutely everything, from achieving job
goals to fighting illness. But when the agonizing death of his wife left him desolate, he abandoned his
writing and self-help career to focus on his own brand of self-pity. He is living a hermit's life in a secluded
island cabin when a young fan comes in search of him, looking for answers to some difficult questions
about his abandoned philosophy. Pulled along by this eager devotee and other forces he cannot identify, Eric
finds himself facing the questions that he has been avoiding since his terrible loss, and the answers he finds
are far from anything he expected. Montemarano's <
turns dark and hopeful, it is<< a beautiful journey of self-discovery>> that will inspire readers to question the
accepted confines of the world, and leave them pondering the powers of belief.
Ophoff, Cortney
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Ophoff, Cortney. "The Book of Why." Booklist, 1 Dec. 2012, p. 22. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A312172773/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c1874790.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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The Book of Why
Publishers Weekly.
259.44 (Oct. 29, 2012): p30+.
COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Book of Why
Nicholas Montemarano. Little, Brown, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-316-18847-0
Everything happens for a reason--except when it doesn't. This is the premise of Montemarano's (If the Sky
Falls) quasi-philosophical second novel, which asks the question: why doesn't it? Too-aptly-named life
coach Eric Newborn cuts himself off from the world after his wife, Cary, dies of complications from a brain
tumor. A guru of positive thinking and hailed preacher of "anything is possible," Eric becomes the "selfhelp
author who can't help himself." Montemarano, a Pushcart-winner who has appeared four times in Best
American Short Stories volumes, has a strong grasp of New Age--speak (which is quite funny at times). He
has created a mishmash of fan letter snippets; choppy, stream-of-consciousness meditations on loss; and
flashbacks to Eric and Cary's solid marriage and her decline, painting<< a convincing portrait of a breakdown
of faith and self-worth>>. But a convoluted and thin thread involving a wacko groupie who shows up seeking
counsel, while offering her own misguided version of renewal, takes some steam out of the novel. The path
this groupie leads Eric down--a spontaneous road trip to a place from a dream in search of a stranger she
believes is connected to Eric's past--feels <
Grinberg Literary Management. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Book of Why." Publishers Weekly, 29 Oct. 2012, p. 30+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A307076788/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0c64d02c.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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Montemarano, Nicholas: THE BOOK OF
WHY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2012):
COPYRIGHT 2012 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Montemarano, Nicholas THE BOOK OF WHY Little, Brown (Adult Fiction) $24.99 1, 8 ISBN: 978-0-316-
18847-0
An author of self-help books discovers that the easy solutions he gives others are of little help in resolving
Big Life Issues. Eric Newborn--yes, the name is symbolic--writes books on "Everyday Miracles" and gives
cheery pep talks at Celebrate Life conferences, dispensing nostrums such as, "We really do get what we're
thinking about" and "Every one of you has the potential to heal. You are all miracle workers." But he finds
it difficult to take his own advice when his beloved wife dies. He winds up living a reclusive life on
Martha's Vineyard, his days filled with memories both of his wife and of his childhood--filled with magic,
wonder and fear--in Queens, and he walks his dog, Ralph. One day, a woman named Sam has a car accident
near Eric's home, and he does what he can to aid her, all the while hiding his identity. And then Eric himself
has an accident, and Sam in turn nurses him. She finds out who he is--Sam's a big fan, and neither one truly
believes in what seem to be random and capricious life events. (In fact, Eric's last book is There Are No
Accidents.) Eric allows himself to engage in a series of deep memories about life with his wife, their
inability to conceive and the couple's eventually becoming foster parents. He also allows himself to imagine
alternative endings to their life together, the "might-have-beens" that could have structured their future.
<
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Montemarano, Nicholas: THE BOOK OF WHY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2012. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A305184904/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d2ac91af.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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Montemarano, Nicholas: If the Sky Falls:
Stories
Kirkus Reviews.
73.16 (Aug. 15, 2005): p876.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Montemarano, Nicholas IF THE SKY FALLS: Stories Louisiana State Univ. (208 pp.) $16.95 paperback
original Oct. 1, 2005 ISBN: 0-8071-3122-9
Death, disabilities and dysfunction, dryly described, fill 11 stories of unrelenting unhappiness.
Testing the limits of well-meaning readers who want to give good writers a fair chance, Montemarano,
whose 2001 novel A Fine Place was rooted in the racial conflicts of Bensonhurst, offers a succession of
bleakly linked stories in which people go, for the most part, from bad to worse. The opening story presents
an impatient and incompetent mother who carries out a threat to leave her young, innocently disobedient
daughter in the park, where she is taken away forever by a probable pedophilic murderer. The narrator is the
little girl's brother, who was doomed to live with the wretched mother and an ineffective father into
permanently scarred adulthood. There is a brace of stories narrated by a young man working, in the first, as
attendant to a severely disabled couple and, in the second, as attendant to the surviving husband who blames
him for the death of his wife. Unable to speak, the wife could communicate solely by animal-like noises and
raised eyelids. Unable to feed herself, she was in constant danger of choking, which, in fact, at the opening
of the second story, she has done. The cerebral palsy-afflicted husband, disagreeable in the extreme, can
speak enough to berate the narrator at every turn. When the widower invites an equally handicapped chum
over to watch a Yankees game, he directs the visitor to give his own flunky the afternoon off. The
overworked attendant decides to take both gents off to Yankee Stadium, but the drunken trip (the guys in the
wheelchair down many beers) gets side-routed to a lap-dance parlor where disaster predictably ensues. A
later story features a dog thrown to its death from a window prior to even greater tragedy. The writing is all
quite smooth, but one may be reminded of those weird German kindertotenlieder, lovely songs about
childhood death.
<
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Montemarano, Nicholas: If the Sky Falls: Stories." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2005, p. 876. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A135662243/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e232c821. Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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If the Sky Falls
Publishers Weekly.
252.32 (Aug. 15, 2005): p30.
COPYRIGHT 2005 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* If the Sky Falls NICHOLAS MONTEMARANO. Louisiana State Univ., $16.95 paper (216p) ISBN 0-
8071-3122-9
Montemarano plays with the purpose and effect of storytelling in his dark, powerful debut collection (after
A Fine Place) even as he crafts believably troubled psyches. The unreliable narrators of these 11 first-person
stories are <
occasionally do they find redemption and tenderness in unexpected ways. In "To Fall Apart," a man revisits
his sister's childhood disappearance, "the story I have revised so many times that it is now more memory
than imagination," fantasizing a different, happier ending for her. Stories serve this man as anodynes, albeit
temporary ones, allowing him some form of dignity and hope. In "The Usual Human Disabilities," a
caretaker for two imperious cerebral palsy sufferers cracks under the pressure of his thankless work and
abuses his charges in a warped effort to treat them extra-special. "The November 15" is a deeply disturbing
account of a man broken by arbitrary torture. The stylistically playful if not so readable piece, "The Worst
Degree of Unforgivable," details obsessive-compulsive behavior and barely suppressed rage via an 11-pagelong
single sentence. Montemarano handles <
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"If the Sky Falls." Publishers Weekly, 15 Aug. 2005, p. 30. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A135248319/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5195c641.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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Montemarano, Nicholas. A Fine Place
Jim Dwyer
Library Journal.
127.2 (Feb. 1, 2002): p132.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Montemarano, Nicholas. A Fine Place. Context Bks., dist. by Publishers Group West. Feb. 2002. c.226p.
LC 2001005518. ISBN 1-893956-21-0. $21.95. F
When Tony Santangelo's friends pressure him into participating in what had been intended as a beating, one
young man dies and another's life is changed forever. Tony, who had few prospects before he was sent to
prison for the crime, later returns to his stagnant and repressive neighborhood: the Italian American enclave
of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, a "fine place" for a racially motivated crime. He also returns to a father who can't
hold a job and elderly relatives who have been bickering for decades. His great aunt and grandmother
smother him with kindness and guilt, while his bitter, sarcastic grandfather is always "in a mood." Chapters
alternate between past and present, most narrated by Tony's grandmother, though his grandfather, aunt,
father, and Tony himself also speak. With his clannish, <
<
Dwyer, California State Univ., Chico
Dwyer, Jim
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Dwyer, Jim. "Montemarano, Nicholas. A Fine Place." Library Journal, 1 Feb. 2002, p. 132. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A286255517/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7084de27. Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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A fine place. (Fiction)
Publishers Weekly.
249.1 (Jan. 7, 2002): p47.
COPYRIGHT 2002 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
NICHOLAS MONTEMARANO. Context, $21.95 (226p) ISBN 1-893956-21-0
The sensational 1989 murder of a black teen-ager in Brooklyn provides the background for Montemarano's
first novel, a kaleidoscopic picture of a family and a community still living with loss, pain, anger and guilt.
The mundane routines of Vera and Sal Santangelo's lives assume a tragic shade after their grandson, Tony,
is imprisoned because of his involvement with the crime. Vera's sister, Sophia, also falls under this shadow;
childless and widowed, she places Tony on a pedestal, idealizing the young man through her hazy memories
of his childhood. All are galvanized with anticipation when Tony finishes his five-year sentence and is
released from prison, but his reappearance in the family only re-ignites existing tensions. Montemarano
chooses to tell the story through multiple perspectives, alternating among Sal, Vera, Sophia and Tony; what
the story loses in cohesion it gains in <
randomly back and forth and gradually delineating the characters' inner lives throtigh short glimpses of their
sad memories and simple daily routines. The actual murder is described only in the first -- riveting --
chapter, and in the final one, but in between the banalities of family conversation make it clear that racism is
ingrained in their attitudes and has been passed on to Tony and his peers. The older generation's
preoccupation with their aging bodies creates a pervasive atmosphere of quiet, understated despair, while
the gritty reality of Tony's experiences reveals the chasm between them. What is most affecting is the
realization that Tony is the victim of social circumstances, as the sins and daily sufferings of this ill-fated
family are revealed in a stark and unforgiving light. (Feb.)
Forecast: The arresting black-and-white jacket art and a blurb from Robert Coles should help this strong
small press offering pick up a few extra readers.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"A fine place. (Fiction)." Publishers Weekly, 7 Jan. 2002, p. 47. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A81891585/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=70df97b1.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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A Fine Place. (Fiction)
Kirkus Reviews.
69.24 (Dec. 15, 2001): p1709.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
A FINE PLACE
Context Books (226 pp.)
$21.95
Feb. 2002
ISBN: 1-893956-21-0
A first novel, loosely based on actual events from the late I 1980s, describing the confusions and travails of
a young Italian-American from Brooklyn implicated in the murder of a black man.
Bensonhurst in 1989 (i.e., the pre-Giuliani era) was trying hard to remain what it had always been: a quiet
backwater of Brooklyn, of little interest to anyone who did not already live there. Tony Santangelo, born
and raised in Bensonhurst, was a true neighborhood boy with all the proper loyalties, but he succeeded
nevertheless in nearly destroying the place by bringing in the one thing his neighbors could not tolerate:
publicity. Tony took part in the fatal beating of a young black, an act so apparently wanton and unprovoked
that it attracted international attention and set off a veritable invasion of protest marches and rallies. After
serving five years in jail for the crime, Tony came back to Brooklyn and took a job as a security clerk. His
story seesaws back and forth in time for ten years, beginning in 1989, but the fulcrum of the tale is the night
of the slaying, even if the narration is episodic and somewhat rambling. We learn that Tony once had a
black girlfriend, we are treated to descriptions of ba ckseat orgies and depraved bachelor parties, and we
find casual references to the neighborhood wiseguys who are part of the local terrain. Tony's grandmother
Vera likes to cook and spends a lot of time in church. Tony's grandfather Val is a Giants fan. Tony's father
Gino isn't around very much. A suspicious-looking black man with a tattoo on his neck seems to be stalking
Tony after his release from prison. What does it all add up to? Well might one ask, especially as the whole
undertaking is narrated in the sort of workshop prose ("Cars passed on the highway above: the rhythm of
tires rolling over grids in the road; for a brief moment, through an open car window, music") that seems
intent on making as few points as possible.
<
Montemarano, Nicholas
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"A Fine Place. (Fiction)." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2001, p. 1709. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A81470040/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e62f3e84.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
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