Reuben, Reuben

Book excerpt: "Reuben Reuben "is set in mid 1950s suburbia in Connecticut and starts out being told from the point of view of a grumpy but corruptible chicken farmer. The novel s second part recounts what happens when a womanizing poet from Wales (clearly Dylan Thomas) visits this new-to-him world of tidy lawns and cocktail parties and liberated lady poets. In the final third, a British poet/agent named Mopworth continues the story of the confused suburban literati. Fast-paced, devastating, energetic, and laugh-out-loud funny, it also has a manic note to it, as if the author were Scheherazade-like; being compulsively entertainingscrambling to amuse the reader with stories and jokes lest serious questions arise."