|
School Library Journal Fiction | Nonfiction Fiction RUBENSTEIN, Wade. Gullboy: The Inconceivable Life of Franco Pajarito Zanpa, a Novel. illus. by Danny Shanahan. 416p. Counterpoint. 2005. Tr $24.95. ISBN 1-58243-330-5. LC 2005013655. Adult/High School–"Inconceivable" is truly the word for this treasure of a tale. The infant Franco is discovered in a seagull's nest by Ernesto Zanpa, a shiftless young man who drifts through his days with as little work as possible. Despite the objections of his young wife, a streetwalker with aspirations of Internet porn stardom, Ernesto quickly becomes attached to the boy with feathers on his body and a beak where his mouth should be. As he takes to fatherhood, he finds himself driven to make a good life for Franco and discovers his hidden culinary talent in the greasy kitchen of the neighborhood diner. At the same time that Ernesto is trying to do right by his boy, plenty of people want to capitalize on the child's oddities, and Ernesto is kept busy fending off a crooked lawyer, the Russian mafia, and a doctor who sees Franco's surgical potential as the ticket to medical glory. The wildly improbable twists and turns of the story are grounded in the all-too-real egocentricity of Rubenstein's characters. By turns tragic and hilarious, this story is about what it means to be a family, the fine line between exceptional and bizarre, and the fact that what is grotesque in this life has little to do with outward appearance and everything to do with personal ambition and greed. Shanahan's simple line drawings that precede each chapter accentuate the wacky charm of this first novel.–Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Library System, VA |