Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories

Brilliantly assembled The Brickman Stories create a universe around a family with a collection of heart wrenching and well written stories. Saving Stanley, the opener is a phenomenal beginning and lays the foundation for several stories which bounce around in time and perspective all with the common thread of the same family. What I really love about The Brickman Stories is that it works both as a novel and as individual stories. It's masterfully crafted and should not be missed.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The stories are serious, yet entertaining. Mr. Nadelson does a wonderful job of making his characters come to life - so much so that I feel I actually know the Brickman family. You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy "Saving Stanley".

Last week I had the pleasure of lunch with Jackie, a Yugoslavian exchange student and avid recreational reader, who told me (among other things) that I must read The Brickman Stories, i.e. Saving Stanley. I finished this smooth New Jersey family saga in six days. The book is built on engrams (persistent protoplasmic alterations hypothesized to occur on stimulation of living neural tissue and to account for memory), meat-pies, weightlifting, and Screaming Trees. I'm still sitting in the brown couch of the Brickman living room, Stanley (the cat) dying under the bed, Jared Brickman grunting over his weights, Mrs. Brickman late home from teaching, Mr. Brickman snapping his paper while the Mets lose five to four to the Phillies in the bottom of the seventh. In Saving Stanley there are no briefcases full of counterfeit money, no shootouts, no serial killers, no world salvation, no cleverly integrated political agendas. This is real life, hard lines laid down over clean wounds. It's what the modern, sophisticated urban reader (me) demands. Stylistically, Scott Nadelson reminds me of Carver and Charles Baxter. He knows how to lead, build, and pull. This is intimate, courageous writing. My favorite stories are "Kosher," the account of a young man's relationship with a crippled woman, who manipulates funds through a telephone solicitation scheme, and "Why Not?" the young-love story of a chemist and his new bride, who find an idyllic life they cannot keep.