The Grievers
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Grievers is a darkly comic coming of age novel for a generation that's still struggling to come of age.
When Charley Schwartz learns that an old high school pal has killed himself, he agrees to help his alma mater organize a memorial service to honor his fallen comrade. Soon, however, devestation turns to disgust as Charley discovers that his friend's passing means less to the school than the bottom line. As the memorial service quickly degenerates into a fundraising fiasco, Charley must also deal with a host of other quandaries including a dead-end job as an anthropomorphic dollar sign, his best firned's imminent move to Maryland, an intervention with a drug-addled megalomaniac, and his own ongoing crusade to enforce the proper use of apostrophes among the proprietors of local dining establishments.
Desperate to set the world right and keep his own life from spiraling out of control, Charley rages through his days and nights, plotting all the while the ultimate eulogy for his deceased friend and a scathing indictment of a world gone wrong.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Years later, the class of '91 of Saint Leonard's Academy is reunited by the suicide of fellow alum Billy Chinn in Schuster's second novel (after the 2011's The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl). Charley Schwartz, one Billy's friends from school, isn't doing much better than his late buddy he's working as a giant dollar sign mascot for a bank and wallowing in a "steep and irredeemable slump" of his own until Billy's death provides a wake-up call. Eyes wide open, Charley sets out to bulwark his life against the flood of disappointments and dead-ends while trying to raise money and write a fitting eulogy for Billy's memorial service. While the story line has little to offer (Billy's suicide feels like an unearned plot device whose sole purposes are to set Charley in motion and lend some gravitas to the book) the dialogue throughout is pitch-perfect, there's a laugh on nearly every page, and Schuster's crystal-clear prose shimmers.
