Started reading last night. Couldn't put it down. Really fine writing. Your presence bleeds thru...the same Bob Deemer I have always known. I realize the book deals with difficult, sometime tragic, issues, but your good cheer is always in the background. I think that character trait has allowed you to become(like me) an old fogey laughing your way into eternity."Couldn't put it down" is always good to hear. But this is the result of a conscious strategy because once I decided on telling the story in LAYERS, ala Dos Passos, I knew pacing would be a problem (as in the USA trilogy) and so I decided on a modular construction of VIGNETTES (ala Connell) so that the story spine would return sooner rather than later, despite the layers. In the first 20 pages, pretty much all the themes and techniques are introduced -- and hopefully, as with this reader, the short chapters suggest a "well, just one more" attitude before setting the book down. I thought long and hard about the construction of this story. It's working for more than I expected actually.
A note: I grew up "Bob," being a Jr., but always wrote under Charles and started going by Charles, my first name, when I reached the stage of life in the late 70s when my professional friends outnumbered my personal friends. This was when I moved to Portland from the Eastern Shore. A change of life after the breakup of my marriage (i.e. Deconstructing Sally material etc). A new personal name.
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