City Boy

It doesn't take long to realize that Chloe and Jack are a mismatch from the get-go. A needy, high maintenance girl who blames most of her problems on the fact she is beautiful, pairs up with an eager, devoted man who feels he never quite measures up to his stunner of a wife. The fireworks are inevitable, and the sparks do fly. While Chloe pursues a high powered career in finance, Jack plays the role of struggling writer. His time at home allows him to become inappropriatly entangled with the odd residents of their apartment building, while Chloe pursues her own brand of misbehavior at the office. Wonderful writing, remarkably well developed characters, a witty and believable plot, this novel would as others have mentioned, make a fine movie It's impossible not to enjoy riding along with this train-wreck of a marraige as it hurtles toward it's satisfying crash ending.

Marital infidelity along with love and deception are at the heart of this wry, acerbic and darkly humorous domestic drama set in the windy city of Chicago. Thompson recounts with intuition and detail, the inevitable downfall of a young marriage when unfaithfulness, disloyalty and betrayal inevitably set in. A rising young couple Jack and Chloe - he is a writer, she is a beautiful but troubled banker - move into a Chicago apartment to discover that Rich Brezak, their neighbor upstairs is a dope smoker with an almighty loud reggae blaster. Before long Rich's hippy ways and dirty, disorganized life begin to corrupt Jack. When he goes upstairs to tell Rich to turn the music down, he ends up staying for a joint and partying with Rich and his girlfriends, Raggedy Ann and Ivory. Jack has some quick, furtive sex with Ivory, and then decides to keep the status quo in his life with Chloe. Meanwhile Jack begins to suspect that Chloe, who has drinking problems, is having an affair with someone she works with. Thompson inserts into this drama an assortment of batty and eccentric of characters. Mrs. Lacagnina, and elderly lady who lives upstairs, never going out of her apartment and Mr. Dandy and old Irish Catholic and confirmed bachelor, who is incensed at the changes taking place in the neighborhood. Much of the story is told from Jack's point of view in the form of a twisted reverie. Sometimes we watch as Jack crafts a new story, lingering softly over his feelings for Chloe, but more often, we catch him in an act of remembrance, recalling, with a kind of baffled amazement, when things start to go wrong with Chloe. Jack begins to realize that "there is nothing in life that is not conflicted and imperfect and wounded, love most of all." He is no lonelier than anyone else who has walked on the earth, but he is tired of words, the effort of wrangling, coaxing and explaining. Jack hates having his "insulated bubble of smugness punctured ? he is the only one in the face of it all capable of insight, observation and judgment."A highlight of the novel is the series of arguments between Jack and Chloe "with words getting of the track, then the tracks going haywire, looping and doubling back, ending up somewhere that is shocking in its ugliness." Jack's life "seems to be taking place in slow motion, like the arc of a ball thrown high for an easy catch." The scene when Jack finally confronts Chloe on her infidelities is typical of the way the novel works - each chapter showing us a Jack who has been brushed by the wings of the past. Thompson largely defines her characters by their actions and dialogue rather than their thoughts and she gives us in Jack and Chloe an infinitely impatient intelligence. This along with the book's sharp dialogue and astute urban, inner city observations sometimes makes City Boy more closely resemble a movie treatment than a novel. But Thompson does a great job of teasing the reader with her cynical social observations, giving us an enter

Jean Thompson does a wonderful job of recounting the decay of the starter marriage of Jack and Chloe, two young yuppie-ish Chicagoans who were probably mis-matched from the start. Jack first sees Chloe in a poetry class at Northwestern and is immediately taken with her. He then casually pursues her, orchestrating several accidental meetings and ultimately the relationship takes off. The action of the novel takes place after they move into their first apartment--a building with four flats. Because Chloe works in a high-powered bank training program, it is Jack, who is "working" on a novel, who becomes entangled witht he lives of the other inhabitants of the building--each of whom are disturbing in their own way. The novel starts off a little slowly, but once Thompson gets into the rhythm of their daily life in this apartment building, dealing with the obnoxious reggae cranking Rich upstairs, Rich's entourage of women,the racist across the hall--the pace picks up. The writing here is excellent--certain passages Thompson writes are so witty, so observant, so dead on. This is a terrific book. Very well done.

Chloe Chase and Jack Orlovich are young, attractive and new to the city. Jack?s trying, but not succeeding at being a writer and Chloe has put her literary ambitions aside to support them by working as a bank executive. They met at North Western, are newly married and like most people, they start out happy. They?ve just moved into one of the ground units in a four flat and they have some interesting neighbors to contend with. Downstairs with Chloe and Jack we have the old letch, Mr. Dandy. Upstairs, the widowed and deaf Mrs. Lacagnina who shares the top with a young, white rasta guy named Rick who seems to be running a perpetually loud party.Mrs. Lacagnina may be deaf, but Jack is not. He needs a little piece and quiet to write, but every time he goes up to tell Rick to turn down the volume, he winds up being sucked into the party and a girl there he can?t resist, Ivory, a pale blonde with a bad leg and an attitude. As the story progresses Chloe starts to resent supporting Jack, whose mind seems to be on more that party than writing the great American classic. Jack suspects Chloe is having an affair and she?s got good ground to suspect him and, during the course of their summer, events spin out of control in this novel that reads like a thriller. The story is witty, sad, painful and playful and I highly recommend it.Karen Holtz, New Jersey Book Girl