Henry of Atlantic City

Henry's character is a bit stretched, but his perceptions certainly are not. This is a strange book that is also lovely. The horrors of the world do not have to be spelled out - it is enough to know that evil is part of the world. That's the way Henry finds out, that's why the close of the novel is so perfect.

This is Frederick Reuss second novel and it is spectacular. I don't often say that about novels. Indeed, a great many novels I find utterly unbearable. So what makes Henry of Atlantic City worthy of such praise? First- the protagonist of the story- a six-year old boy in weird and difficult situation. His father works at Caesar's Palace Casino and dabbles in shady business, his mother is missing, and Henry is often left in the care of others. Now, Henry might have been written as just another dysfunctional kid. Instead, Reuss bestows Henry with a photographic memory and access to reprints of fifth century Gnostic texts. While this slightly strains the credulity, it isn't unbelievable. Second, Reuss creates a small number of very real and interesting characters. There's the cranky Mrs. O'Brien, who occasionally cares for Henry, which amounts to harping at his peculiarities; there's the grumpy Father Crowley, a priest who cannot understand Henry and who thinks the best way to deal with Henry's eccentricity to quash it. Then there's Sy, a self-professed "catholic Jew" and one of the few people who can understand Henry. The list goes on. Third, the story is told mostly from the perspective of Henry and it is fascinating. Reuss has Henry interpret his shifting, unusual circumstances through the lens of both a typical child and what Henry has read in the Gnostic texts. So Henry repeats what others have said, for examplereferring to one woman as "the Whore of New Jersey," and chatters plenty of his daily life in Byzantium. The result is some unusual blends of the realities of Henry's life in sleazy Atlantic City and the ancient world. "Henry nodded and explained that it [Atlantic City] was the capital of the eastern empire and that there were Trojans in the Palace because of AIDS. Not people from Troy- rubbers...Henry explained that there were machines in all the bathrooms. Trojans make good plagues sowers and Henry dropped them from the roof for fun. He pretended that each Trojan was filled with plague germs and when it hit the ground, whoever got splashed would get the plague. There was another way of plague sowing that was even more fun...You took a Trojan and put some half and half coffee creamer in it. The when nobody was looking you left it some place- like a corridor or a chair in the lobby. Henry did a lot of plague sowing around the Palace until Theodora made the palace guards do extra shifts walking the corridors and checking the chairs in the lobby and the staircases. That was just before the Nike riots happened and they had to go to Sy's sister's house in Philadelphia." While Henry of Atlantic City is a very funny book, it is also profoundly moving, for Henry is regularly tossing out the profound notions he finds in the Gnostic texts. Henry of Atlanic City is a triumph, a grand blend of humor, psychology, philosophy, and theology and it now occupies a cherished place on my bookshelf.

the dialogue is witty. the boy-saint is an absorbing epic character. the history gives it an atmosphere of magic and grandeur...