The Obituary Writer Book

In his delicate and hilarious first novel, Porter Shreve paints a fast-moving tale about the grungy, romantic allure of newspaper work and the muddled conspiracy of nature and nurture in a young man's maturation. The Obituary Writer's narrator, Gordie Hatch, has papers in his blood: his late father was a crackerjack reporter, his mother a journalism-school secretary. His environment reeks of his avocation, too, from the bundled newspapers in his garage to his comforter, which bears old headlines like TITANIC SINKS, SACCO AND VANZETTI GUILTY, and LINDBERGH BABY KIDNAPPED. By age 8, Gordie is fully ready to grab the newspaperman's baton, or, more bluntly, to get a paper route. ("I grew up with a heightened sense of my own importance, which my mother encouraged," he says. Not least because she seems to have delivered far more papers than he.) In 1989, when he moves straight from J School into an entry-level position at the hallowed St. Louis Independent, Gordie experiences an eternal, embryonic sense of belonging within its perfectly stereotypical nerve center, one that might have housed his father. Sometimes I'd swear I could sense him looking out through my eyes, a young reporter waiting for the flare in the sky that points to the great discovery. I'd stop at the rackety wire machines under the mural of Remington's Pony Express to scroll through the overnight news, then pick up a late edition from the stacks before taking the long, slow route to my desk. But Gordie knows he can't afford to move slowly. His beat, the obituary desk, is either a stepping stone for the gifted or a place to park damaged has-beens. When he makes three crucial judgment errors in succession, he is suddenly ensnared by a Southern femme fatale--who lures him into an exquisitely drawn world of highly un-newsworthy bank clerks, dog shows, and bumbling small-town artistes. A far cry from the collapse of European communism, which his luckier colleagues get to cover. Though the final third of The Obituary Writer veers into formulaic suspense-novel territory at times, Gordie always remains engagingly self-aware and the novel's denouement is well worth a bit of tough sledding. Will our hero realign himself with his destined path? How strong is fate, exactly? We cannot say, Gentle Reader. You must uncork this fine, funny novel for yourself. --Jean LenihanRead More