Car Trouble

August 1, 2018
A charming, self-destructive Irish-American father takes his family on a troubled joy ride."Vintage car" is a loaded phrase in New York Post TV editor Rorke's evocative debut, which introduces the Flynns, a working-class family struggling to stay afloat in 1970s Brooklyn. Patrick Flynn is a charismatic, impulsive drunk who grandly brings home a string of cars with nicknames like The Black Beauty--a '58 Pontiac Parisienne--bought on the cheap at police auctions and later ditched because of engine problems. The cars are beautiful, but their insides are rotted out--just like Flynn's own promises to his children and long-suffering wife Claire. "Dad operated purely on instinct, which didn't always work in his favor," says his teenage son, Nicky, the narrator. Nicky balances the story of his father's decline with his own maturing awareness of life, especially a love of acting that hints at his future theater career. At times the story arc feels a little predictable and the scenes unnecessarily padded out, but Rorke's writing is always assured as he paints a charming portrait of 1970s family life right down to the Amana fridge in the kitchen and Filet-O-Fish Fridays for the Catholic school kids during Lent. Rorke avoids easy psychologizing to explain Pat's behavior; Nicky never tries to understand why his father seesaws between the roles of family man and "Himself," a nickname the family gives his drunken alter ego. The closest Nicky ever gets to an answer comes one night when he finds his father at the Dew Drop, a local bar, and heartbreakingly realizes it is packed with men just like Pat Flynn, "playing the away game from their families."What readers learn in Rorke's moving, bittersweet story is that hard realizations are often necessary on the road to discovering one's true self.

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August 1, 2018

Nicky Flynn is the oldest of five siblings and the only boy. With a father like Patrick Flynn, heretofore referred to as Himself, that can be a precarious position in the late 1960s. Nicky feels he must protect his sisters and his mother from their volatile patriarch, who's often fueled by righteous indignation at how their Brooklyn neighborhood has changed, along with generous amounts of alcohol. At the same time, Himself invites the not-quite-16-year-old Nicky to learn to drive in a number of automobiles Pat purchases from his favorite dealership: the NYPD auction block. The Blue Max, the Green Hornet, and the Black Beauty convey our young hero around the borough, which becomes a pivotal character in this coming-of-age odyssey. Attending an all-boys Catholic high school, Nicky wants to be more his own man, which is why he auditions for the school musical Bye Bye Birdie and gets a job over his father's objections. VERDICT Trying to fit in while navigating a poisonous home environment, Nicky discovers "a lot of livin' to do" in this captivating debut by New York Post editor Rorke. For readers who enjoy the works of David Duchovny and Charlie Carillo. [Library marketing.]--Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2018
?Nicky's father, whom Nicky calls Himself, loves old cars?more bluntly, junkers?which he routinely buys at police auctions. Fondly, he gives them names. Thus: the Black Beauty, a 1958 Pontiac Parisienne; the Pink Panther, a 1956 Ford Fairlane convertible; and more. Unfortunately, the father is also an alcoholic. When he loses his job because of his drinking, his life begins a long downward spiral: he stops coming home, hanging out at dive bars instead; he becomes increasingly abusive; and then he gets a gun. Teenage Nicky tells this sad story in his own, often eloquent, first-person voice (the father lumbers like a tugboat moving through wet cement; a bridge is a battleship blue and shaped like a steel caterpillar ). Even as his father's life is devolving, Nicky's is evolving as he comes of age in this sometimes funny but always melancholy novel. With a vividly realized setting?Brooklyn in the 1970s?the story is sharply written, inviting deep empathy from readers, who will find universal truths in this compelling tale of a single family.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)