Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2009
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Paperback Original.
James Fitzroy isn't doing so well. Though his old friends in Buffalo believe his life in New York City is a success, in fact he writes ridiculous taglines for a greeting card company. Now he's coming home on Thanksgiving to visit his aging father and dying mother, and unlike other holidays, he's not sure how this one is going to end. Buffalo Lockjaw introduces a fresh new voice in American fiction.
"Caustically comic and wrenchingly emotional, while the wry riffs on family tension and the sad state of Buffalo that appear throughout this fine first novel don't undercut the serious consideration of murder or mercy for terminal patients." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. A novel about hard choices and doing the right thing that is modest, moving and true. " - Kirkus Reviews.
"Buffalo Lockjaw, like its charming, bitter screw-up of a narrator, reaches finally for larger meaning, and succeeds.... A brazen and tender book about a city and a scene, a mother and a son, and the beauty and pain of several kinds of love."
- Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land.
"Ames knows how to build up the world with a light hand while still getting to the complicated and painful ways we muddle through. Funny, fresh, and generous." - Aimee Bender.
"In Buffalo Lockjaw, love of one's parents and love of one's hometown mix powerfully with the mad undertow of loss that seems as inevitable in life as gravity."
- Jonathan Ames.
This information about Buffalo Lockjaw was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Greg Ames grew up in Buffalo, New York. His work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, McSweeney's, Fiction International, The Sun, and other publications. He has taught fiction at Brooklyn College and at Binghamton University. He lives and works in Brooklyn.
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