Leaps of Faith

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In its eagerness to give voice to a multitude of characters, Kranz's huge, overpopulated, hyperkinetic novel of low-rent Manhattan life struggles to invest each voice with meaning. Centered on Flip, an aspiring actor (and bike messenger ), his boyfriend Warren (a psychic), Flip's sister, Rosie (a union organizer and all-around agitator), and Warren's sister, Madeleine (mentally unstable and absent in France), the novel is launched when Warren's rich and egregiously selfish WASP family informs him that he must take in Madeleine's biracial, bicultural eight-year-old daughter, Juliet, while Madeleine gets treatment at a French hospital. Meanwhile, Rosie is trying to coordinate a strike while suffering from fibroids (the novel abounds in graphic descriptions of menstruation), and Flip maniacally works one temp job after another between bit parts. In caring together for Juliet--the book's most sympathetic and sophisticated character--Flip and Warren find common ground, but Warren's trust fund and Flip's adventures in gay clubs constantly threaten their relationship. Filling in around the edges of this story are assorted actors, directors, teachers, lesbians, in-laws, daycare workers, Chelsea gym boys and still others, most of whom make brief appearances before disappearing altogether. In the end, the book's swollen cast proves too big, and each individual too self-absorbed: Flip with his insufferable bitchiness, Warren with his inner psychic "visions" and even Madeleine with her post-asylum pouting strain the reader's sympathies. Mostly composed of a series of theater-style monologues drifting into conventional narrative, the novel stretches the bounds of melodrama, but never transcends it. Kranz does offer a good wide-angle portrait of New York's multilayered populace (each character wears several different hats in any given day, to which most New Yorkers will relate), but it's not enough to tie the book's many different strands into a cohesive whole. (Mar.) FYI: Kranz used parts of this novel in her one-character play, Stunt Man. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

Kranz's first novel artfully explores the complexities of life for two gay men trying to come to terms with their relationship in a not-so-tolerant world. Set in New York City, the story is told from the perspective of a core group of characters: Warren, a psychic from an upper-class family; his partner, Chip, an aspiring actor; and Rosie, Chip's sister, a union organizer with relationship troubles of her own. The main thrust of the story is Warren and Chip's struggle to legitimize their relationship with some sort of marriage (they spend most of the novel trying to decide what actually to call their union). Kranz also explores the lives of the people closest to them as well as the different dimension their world takes on when Warren must suddenly become a parent to his eight-year-old niece. Though the story seems a little overlong, the author is adept at creating smart and sometimes hilarious dialog; by the end of the novel these people seem like family. Recommended for all public libraries.--Caroline Mann, Univ. of Portland Lib., OR Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Deborah Peifer

Were it not for the efforts of a local independent bookseller, I doubt very much that Leaps of Faith would have leapt into my shopping bag. The combination of its heft (I mean, 565 pages!) and the fact of its being a first novel would have moved me quickly to another corner of the new book table. Fortunately, a bookseller whose judgment I trust assured me that Leaps of Faith was a novel of surpassing excellence, one that I would relish. He was right, of course. Leaps of Faith is a remarkable novel, filled with extraordinary characters.

Flip is an actor, which means that he spends a lot of time doing no-pay showcases and low-pay industrials. As for his film work, his current project is painfully typical:

The project is crap.... The script is really awful – and not even awful in an interesting way, but the kind of awful that every new filmmaker is guilty of. Every straight filmmaker, anyway: the hero loves a woman, who leaves him for another guy, so he suffers to a truly extraordinary extent, mostly by having to eat alone in restaurants.

Flip's lover is Warren, a real psychic, meaning that it's next to impossible for Flip ever to surprise Warren or to deceive him. The one thing Warren can't seem to get, psychically or otherwise, is that Flip loves him unreservedly. Since the one thing Flip can't seem to understand is that Warren loves him with an equal ferocity, Flip and Warren have regular and serious relationship difficulties.

Rosie is Flip's sister, a union organizer who suffers fools not at all and is perfectly willing to offer advice, at length, whenever asked, and often before she's asked. When Flip asks Rosie for her opinion of his career and his life, Warren thinks only that "already he's looking cornered. Which should make me want to help him, shouldn't it? But what I really think is that he should know better. He asked Rosie what she thinks. Now she's going to tell him." Tell him she does, and the telling leads to separation, pain, and finally, the realization that even though it may be painful to admit, the fact is that Rosie is just about always right, a character trait that makes her very hard to love.

Juliet, the biracial daughter of Warren's loony sister, is shipped to the States from Paris when her mother is sent to the happy farm, causing the possibilities for love and angst and transformation to multiply geometrically, as Warren is forced to consider just what it might mean to his ordered life to add a precocious eight-year-old to the mix. Does Flip become Uncle Flip? Will the families, none too thrilled that Flip and Warren are gay, respond with glad cries when Juliet comes along for Christmas dinner? What about Flip's career? What about Warren's trust fund? Will Rosie survive giving up chocolate and caffeine?

Rachel Kranz takes extraordinary risks in her novel, starting with the use of multiple first-person narrators, but the risks pay off. As each narrator describes the same incident, we are offered the chance to see circumstance from various perspectives. The result is an extraordinary richness of characterization. Hearing each tale from the point of view of several participants enables us to see the ways in which truth, or what passes for it, changes from teller to teller. Small moments that each narrator observes and comments on add to the splendid richness of the characters. When Flip's friend Mario embarrasses him in public, Flip realizes too many people are watching so he can't "actually kill Mario right this minute, but I'll put it on my to-do list." As we get to know them, it becomes easy to understand just why Flip is justified in his wish to annihilate the well-intentioned but impossible Mario.

Kranz juggles with real finesse several main plots in addition to the relationship problems, including actor anxiety as Flip tries to work in an entirely new way that threatens his core beliefs as an artist and Rosie works to organize a strike against a major New York university.

Leaps of Faith is an extraordinary novel, funny, heart-wrenching, filled with vital and memorable characters whose fictional lives enrich our own. Using the everyday events of real life, Kranz creates a credible universe in which all things are possible, even happiness and true love, if only we are willing to take that first leap of faith.

Deborah Peifer is a Bay Area critic who considers a good read to be better than almost anything.(Deborah Peifer,San Francisco Bay Guardian)