Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
A wildly original debut, Maynard & Jennica weaves together dozens of voices to give us an unforgettable love story, a hilarious urban comedy, a page-turning literary mystery, and a portrait of our times. Maynard Gogarty is a defeated musician, a reformed misanthrope who makes a hobby of surreptitiously filming the fashion faux pas of New York City commuters. On an uptown 6 train in the sweltering summer of 2000 he meets Jennica Green, a nostalgic Californian who calculates that she’s been lonesome 68.53 percent of her adult life. Though their initial acquaintance is fleeting, when fate next brings them together, at a screening of Maynard’s film, romance intrudes. And as with most things in life, everyone has an opinion.In the case of Maynard & Jennica, everyone includes many living and some dead relatives, a sultry scam artist who may or may not be Russian or Israeli or German, a hip-hop impresario named Puppy Jones, several dubious lawyers, a long-lost best friend, and a freelance contributor to The New Yorker. Exuberantly illuminating much that is telling (and often horrifying) about our times, fast-paced, and wryly funny, Maynard & Jennica introduces an astonishing number of narrators -- thirty-five in all -- while remaining true to the relationships at its heart. The result is an uproarious and deeply moving tour de force. Delson has given us a pair of lovers who are flawed, complex, at once eccentric and deeply familiar -- and in whose story we continue to feel invested long after we have turned the last page.
Synopsis
A wildly original debut, Maynard & Jennica weaves together dozens of voices to give us an unforgettable love story, a hilarious urban comedy, a page-turning literary mystery, and a portrait of our times. Maynard Gogarty is a defeated musician, a reformed misanthrope who makes a hobby of surreptitiously filming the fashion faux pas of New York City commuters. On an uptown 6 train in the sweltering summer of 2000 he meets Jennica Green, a nostalgic Californian who calculates that she s been lonesome 68.53 percent of her adult life. Though their initial acquaintance is fleeting, when fate next brings them together, at a screening of Maynard s film, romance intrudes. And as with most things in life, everyone has an opinion.
In the case of Maynard & Jennica, everyone includes many living and some dead relatives, a sultry scam artist who may or may not be Russian or Israeli or German, a hip-hop impresario named Puppy Jones, several dubious lawyers, a long-lost best friend, and a freelance contributor to The New Yorker. Exuberantly illuminating much that is telling (and often horrifying) about our times, fast-paced, and wryly funny, Maynard & Jennica introduces an astonishing number of narrators -- thirty-five in all -- while remaining true to the relationships at its heart. The result is an uproarious and deeply moving tour de force. Delson has given us a pair of lovers who are flawed, complex, at once eccentric and deeply familiar -- and in whose story we continue to feel invested long after we have turned the last page.
The New York Times - Thomas Beller
…this novel is made up of characters speaking at us as though to a camera crew that's been following them around for months. Maynard & Jennica feels like the first reality-television novel. Let me add that I don't mean this as an insult—Rudolph Delson has used the form to unspool a tightly plotted and genuinely original book…By the end…I was wallowing in a state of pleasure but also suspicion—suspicious because much of the novel is just so damn cute. But looking through its pages again I found one tiny comic gem after another, one pitch-perfect rendering of the modern moment after another. Delson brings a Nicholson Baker-like degree of precision to his descriptions; the book is always alive. I felt the odd elation that occurs when you read fiction that not only confirms your sense of the modern world but enlarges it, even if in a slightly precious way, and makes you laugh. That was my experience of Maynard & Jennica.
Editorials
Thomas Beller
…this novel is made up of characters speaking at us as though to a camera crew that's been following them around for months. Maynard & Jennica feels like the first reality-television novel. Let me add that I don't mean this as an insult—Rudolph Delson has used the form to unspool a tightly plotted and genuinely original book…By the end…I was wallowing in a state of pleasure but also suspicion—suspicious because much of the novel is just so damn cute. But looking through its pages again I found one tiny comic gem after another, one pitch-perfect rendering of the modern moment after another. Delson brings a Nicholson Baker-like degree of precision to his descriptions; the book is always alive. I felt the odd elation that occurs when you read fiction that not only confirms your sense of the modern world but enlarges it, even if in a slightly precious way, and makes you laugh. That was my experience of Maynard & Jennica.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
A heady, slippery dramedy-lite of modern love and urban manners, ex-lawyer Delson's debut puts native New Yorker Maynard Gogarty, a not quite talented composer/filmmaker, in the path of hardworking Californian Jennica Green, who arrives in New York to be "illustrious." Shifting back and forth over the period 2000-2002, this cleverly pieced together story draws on 35 first-person narrators-including friends, family, a macaw, dead ancestors and an emergency brake on the train-to chronicle Maynard and Jennica's shifting roles as potential spouses, schemers, arrestees and exes. Their relationship comes to a head, natch, in the aftermath of 9/11, as the lovers' families meet for the first time. It's gimmicky, but the surprising ways each narrator connects with Maynard and Jennica make for small delights, and the interplay among the voices works often enough. Maynard's blistering riffs on how grief is coopted postcatastrophe end up giving insight into his character, and Delson's prose shimmers when describing the magic and romance of falling in love in New York. (Sept.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationLibrary Journal
This is a pre- and post-9/11 story with multiple characters and agendas. But mainly it's a love story. Maynard is an artist-or desperately wants to be. He has spent all his money on making two films: one made it to Sundance, and the other is about dogs defecating in the park. Either way, he lives the artist's life as an aesthetic seeker and nonconformist, and he's delightfully eccentric. Jennica is equally likable, though entirely different and sometimes too whiny. She knows a designer scarf when she sees one and has moved far away from her hometown just to be somewhere of great consequence. These two are destined not to be together. In his first novel, the boldly inventive Delson uses multiple narrators (including some inanimate objects), which allows us to see that dichotomy so common of multiple viewpoints in which no narrator is completely reliable. At times, the originality is distracting, as if Delson were trying too hard, as when he includes the dialog of frogs and crickets. But, overall, like a contemporary spin-off of Vonnegut, this work has something fresh that needs to be embraced and will resonate with a wide audience. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/15/07.]
—Stephen Morrow
From the Publisher
"A charming comic novel but also an exuberant one-man show . . . warm-hearted . . . contemporary and timeless."—Adam Langer, author of Crossing California and The Washington Story"Nothing this funny, erudite and moving has come along in ages. Delson is a true talent."—Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli
“Maynard and Jennica is courageously hilarious and intimately human . . . this book is the reason we should all read first novels.”—Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
"Expansive, witty, and utterly charming . . . This is a love story that soars, and folds an entire city under its wings."—Lauren Grodstein, author of "Reproduction is the Flaw of Love"
"Delson's prose shimmers when describing the magic and romance of falling in love in New York." Publishers Weekly
"Delson's clever debut is sharp and energetic, a highly original contemporary love story set against New York's invigorating urban landscape." Booklist, ALA
"Boldly inventive . . . this work has something fresh that needs to be embraced and will resonate with a wide audience." Library Journal
"Tightly plotted and genuinely original . . . By the end of the book I was wallowing in a state of pleasure."—Thomas Beller The New York Times Book Review