Receive The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac Author Kris DAgostino Disseminated As Electronic Format

said that every male novelist's Roman à clef could be summed up with the phrase, "I got a handjobyears ago, I am ambivalent about it now, " is very smart. If I had to describe this concisely to someone, it'd be 'hipster fiction',

On one hand, I liked the author's voice, which is why I give itactually more like,, but since it's his debut novel I decided to be generous, It comes across as a bit selfindulgent, Calvin is pretty clearly a selfinsert, I could tell that by reading, and got it confirmed to me in an author's note at the end of the book.


The two main problems I had with this:

Calvin doesn't WANT anything,

Elissa.

Every bit of advice or writing manual I've ever read hammers home the point that a protagonist has to want something in order for their journey to compel a reader.
Calvin is kind of a lump, He jerks off and smokes weed and doesn't want anything out of life or have any goals or interests, While I get that was sort of the point, to portray that as a generational reality, it didn't really make for good tension in a story.


The story itself was pretty aimless, but since I liked the writing style and the observations about people and society that were sprinkled through the narrative, I kept reading.
The biggest mistake in this book is Elissa, I think she could have been eliminated as a character completely, She isn't memorable in a fictional sense, and the whole story of her illegitimate teenage pregnancy just annoyed me, I kept thinking, "Get an abortion, for christ's sake, " As if that wasn't bad enough, the climax of the book involves her dying in childbirth, This didn't work for me on so many levels, Not only did it come across as melodrama, but it felt kind of ridiculous ayear old in thest century dying in childbirth Yeah, I get that it can technically happen, but really It felt unbelievable and forced, and I didn't feel any of the emotional impact I'm sure I was intended to.
For a side character's side plot to end so explosively just seemed like a waste of a climax, It seemed like the author realized he was running out of ways to punish his aimless characters in their depressing world of drudgery and had to grasp for something sensational in order to try and raise the stakes.


It's hard to know based on this book whether D'Agnostino has authorial talent or whether he just has a quirky,engaging voice that he funneled into something vaguely fictional.
I'd have to read something disparate by him to make the judgement call, Hated everything about this book, First line is "I work with retards, " It doesn't ever get any better from there, This is a resetting of the traditional comingofage novel to a more authentic time postcollege and more authentic place back in the family nest.
There are way too many stories about young adults bravely blazing their own path, finding love, and finally making it as an artist, writer, or in some other cool job in the big city.
Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac offers a refreshing

alternative to this cliche,

Cal, ayearold film school drop out finds himself saddled by student loans, stuck working as a teacher's assistant at a nursery school for autistic kids, and living in his parent's crowded home.
His dad has cancer and mopes around the house with a gun in his bathrobe pocket, His teenage sister has cancer, His parent's house is about to be foreclosed upon, Basically, everything's messed up.

It's within this context that Cal realizes adulthood is reached the boring way, through a series of compromises, not by a sudden, explosive epiphany that reveals your actualized self.
But the telling of Cal's story isn't boring at all, It's measured and masterful. D'Agostino achieves a poignant balance between the ordinary and the extraordinary and the comic and tragic, Eventually, it becomes difficult to distinguish one from the other, which is the sign of pretty terrific writing,

Recommended to: anyone who graduated high school afteryou will see yourself in Cal, the parents of anyone who graduated high school afteryou might see your kid in Cal, Westchester/Rockland County folks you might see your town's name in print.
Palisades Mall, Harriman Park, Tappan Zee Bridge shout outs,
During my last semester of college, a professor of mine overheard my conversation with a fellow student about the joys of graduation.
No more late night painting sessions, withhours of sleep on a lumpy couch withcups of coffee, No more paint on my clothes, And no more minimum wage job at a rundown shoe store, I would make my own rules paint on my own time, But my professor knew better than I, “Life of an artist is hard,” she said, “Four months after graduation will be the lowest part of your life, But dont worry, because it will be uphill from there, ” My professor was right. Four months after graduation I was living at home, unemployed, and broke, But also as my professor had predicted, my life got better after months of aimlessness mediocrity, I got a part time job at the library that paid enough for me to live on my own, and pay for my art supplies.
“ Life after graduation is hard, ” She said, “It is a new phase in your life, Just as you had to adjust to high school and college, so do you adjust to becoming an adult, ”

In the Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac, the narrator Calvin, struggles with the similar type of regression that I once was afflicted with.
Only there are some major differences: his father has cancer, his teenage sister is pregnant, and they are about to lose the family home.
In the world of Family Almanac, when it rains, it TURNS INTO THAT FRANKENSTORM CALLED HURRICANE SANDY AND IT DESTROYES EVERYTHING, As am reading this novel, I keep thinking how much shit can a family go through in a period of a year Trust me the things I just listed are the tip of the iceberg.
Once you wade through all of the drama and apathy that this family seems to just ooze from their very core, you are left with a story about family and a manchild who is just trying to get his act together and figure out what being an adult truly means.
A coming of age novel for thest century with social commentary about the state of the economy, with students in massive debt and being unable to get a job even with a college degree.


So I recommend this novel to anyone who had a similar WHAT THE HELL moment when they graduated from college, because you will find this novel highly relatable.
But if you happen to be those lucky few who just seemed to make the right choices in college and got a job right away, you will find the narrator to be annoying and insufferable.
But that is OK, because Calvin would find you to be annoying and insufferable too,
.