Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Jerome Charyn - Jerzy - Review & Giveaway



About the Book

Jerzy Kosinski was a great enigma of post-World War II literature. When he exploded onto the American literary scene in 1965 with his best-selling novel The Painted Bird, he was revered as a Holocaust survivor and refugee from the world hidden behind the Soviet Iron Curtain. He won major literary awards, befriended actor Peter Sellers (who appeared in the screen adaptation of his novel Being There), and was a guest on talk shows and at the Oscars. But soon the facade began to crack, and behind the public persona emerged a ruthless social climber, sexual libertine, and pathological liar who may have plagiarized his greatest works.

Jerome Charyn lends his unmistakable style to this most American story of personal disintegration, told through the voices of multiple narrators—a homicidal actor, a dominatrix, and Joseph Stalin’s daughter—who each provide insights into the shifting facets of Kosinski’s personality. The story unfolds like a Russian nesting doll, eventually revealing the lost child beneath layers of trauma, while touching on the nature of authenticity, the atrocities of WWII, the allure of sadomasochism, and the fickleness of celebrity.




My Review

Jerzy Kosinski, the title character of this book, was quite simply a con artist. He could spin fabulous tales to amuse high profile people at parties and social gatherings, but when it came to writing it all down, he used the hidden talent of a troubled young girl, claiming it as his own.

But like all those who try to pull off wearing different masks throughout life, Kosinski's eventually had to come off. When he's exposed as a fraud by The Village Voice, a quote from his childhood hits the nail squarely on the head, "I'm tired of chess. [My] whole existence has been a chess game."

Let's face it, his formative years growing up in German - then Russian - occupied Poland couldn't have been easy. He learned from a young age that to stay alive, "the best lies keep as close as possible to the truth." Humorously enough, he became "the village's Jewish altar boy." Yet it makes one understand his need for subterfuge.

However, the esteemed literary circles of Manhattan show him no mercy. He falls from the heights of grace becoming a social pariah among the elite and the powerful. No more talk show appearances. No more best sellers. In fact, it could be said that suicide was built into the very fabric of his work since he survived the war on his fierce will alone. One could conclude that his tragic demise was inevitable.

Is despondency Poland's national disease? Possibly. If as a child, Kosinski says, "I feel like I'm a hundred - when will I have time to be a boy?" And his parent replies, "When all our enemies are in the grave." It has to damage a person's psyche, and when it comes to Kosinski, the damage is beyond repair.

Ultimately, he turned into a creepy voyeur rather than a fully actualized person. He even admits it in the novel, when he says to someone, "I meant to say hello. But I was enjoying my little game too much - the pleasure of watching you."

On the whole, I found Jerzy the novel to be a sad tale of a man who was willing to do anything to live, yet didn't know how.

***

Jerzy can be purchased at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound
Bellevue Literary Press

Prices/Formats: $16.99 ebook, $16.99 paperback
Genre: Historical, Jewish
Pages: 240
Release: March 14, 2017
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
ISBN: 9781942658146
Click to add to your Goodreads list.

***

Excerpt

CLICK HERE to read an excerpt from Jerzy.



About the Author

Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century, Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories, I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War, and The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel. Among other honors, he has been longlisted for the PEN Award for Biography, honored as a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, named a Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture, and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York.

Links to connect with Jerome:
Web Site
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads

Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

David E. Grogan - Sapphire Pavilion - Review & Giveaway



About the Book

Steve Stilwell’s former Navy JAG Corps buddy Ric Stokes has been jailed for possession of heroin in Vietnam. He was found in the same room with his traveling companion Ryan Eversall, dead of an overdose and in the company of a prostitute. Steve knows his friend is a straight arrow. Was he set up? If so, for what reason? Steve travels to Ho Chi Minh City in search of the truth. In no time Steve is targeted by the people who framed his friend. A beautiful young American businesswoman insinuates her way into the case. Can she really help, or is she just a dangerous distraction? Ric and Ryan came to Vietnam in search of an Air Force transport plane that disappeared in 1968. The pilot was Ryan’s father. Before the heroin bust, they had located the wreckage. Ryan’s notebook, which Steve manages to obtain, spells out the exact location. Ryan’s widow has given Steve’s associate Casey another piece of valuable evidence, a file labeled “Sapphire Pavilion.” Someone is willing to go to any lengths to steal both the notebook and the file. From Virginia and Texas to DC and Vietnam, powerful, all-seeing forces with unlimited resources are determined to bury the truth about Sapphire Pavilion. But they have grossly underestimated Steve Stilwell and his associate Casey, a former Army pilot who lost her leg in a helo accident. And the ability to inspire loyalty wherever you go can come in handy when danger lurks behind every corner.




My Review

Why does a man always seem to lose his head when it comes to a beautiful woman?

Attorney Steve Stilwell should know better.

One, he's married. And two, he's investigating a politically sensitive case in Vietnam. But when a femme fatale wanders over to his table, asking if she can join him for dinner, instead of saying no—like he should—he takes her up on her offer. Beguiled by her charm, he discloses way too much information about the case and things quickly escalate from there, culminating at his hotel later that night with an unwanted kiss. Before leaving, a chill goes down his spine when she whispers to him, "We're not in Virginia anymore, Steve. This is the Third World. There are no bright lines between good and evil. Everything is a shade of gray."

Making a mad dash for the airport, he arrives back in the United States, and breathes a sigh of relief, thinking that he got away from her…until she shows up at his office uninvited. And this time, she has a stack of secretly-taken photos that she's threatening to show his wife of the two of them, unless he surrenders a key piece of evidence to her. Succumbing to her pretty face in Vietnam has now put Steve in a very compromising position, and he's forced to make a life-altering choice.

And he chooses his professional integrity over his marriage.

When his wife confronts him after viewing the photos, her reaction is gut wrenching. "Her eyes had an intensity about them; Steve felt them probe deep inside him, searching for something like evidence of innocence lost. They made him feel distant from her."

Because in that moment, he knows that he's lost her.

It's disturbing to watch their marriage disintegrate in such a painful way. She knows that she's just not that important to him, and he knows that he failed her as a husband. He didn't even sleep with the woman in Vietnam, but he didn't have to. He always said he'd work on his marriage down the road, but he never did. His job always came first, and when he wins the case that cost him so much, he realizes it's all he has left in his life.

Throughout his life, he's learned how to talk a good game, but his actions never backed up his words. He took advantage of his wife's trust. He used her generosity. And now he's afraid she's going to discover that she's better off without him. He hates that he let the one person he actually loved get crowded out of his life.

It's a brutal lesson for him to have to learn, but it's one that's truthfully told.

***

Sapphire Pavilion can be purchased at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Prices/Formats: ebook, $15.95 paperback
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
Pages: 280
Release: May 1, 2017
Publisher: Camel Press
ISBN: 9781603816038
Click to add to your Goodreads list.

***

About the Author

David E. Grogan was born in Rome, New York, and was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating from the College of William & Mary in Virginia with a B.B.A. in Accounting, he began working for the accounting firm Arthur Andersen & Co., in Houston, Texas, as a Certified Public Accountant. He left Arthur Andersen in 1984 to attend the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville, Virginia, graduating in 1987. He earned his Masters in International Law from The George Washington University Law School and is a licensed attorney in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Grogan served on active duty in the United States Navy for over 26 years as a Navy Judge Advocate. He is now retired, but during the course of his Navy career, he prosecuted and defended court-martial cases, traveled to capitals around the world, lived abroad in Japan, Cuba and Bahrain, and deployed to the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf onboard the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. His experiences abroad and during the course of his career influence every aspect of his writing. Sapphire Pavilion is his second novel. His first was The Siegel Dispositions.

Grogan’s current home is in Savoy, Illinois, where he lives with his wife of 33 years and their dog, Marley. He has three children.

Links to connect with David:
Web Site
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Blog Tour Site


About the Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway