A brave, deeply moving book about love and death from one of our finest writers. Joshua Ferris makes me want to be a better person; how many artists can you say that about?

Charlie Barnes, known ironically as “Steady Boy” just turned sixty-eight years old as the novel opens in 2008 (to coincide with the economic meltdown and recession). To make matters worse, the father of four, now on his fifth marriage, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, “the big kahuna of cancers.”

The narrator is Jake Barnes, one of Charlie’s offspring, and a novelist. Jake is a success, in spite of the example provided by his father, who saw the failure of one “great” business idea after another. In writerly style, Jake tells his story about his father in sections labeled Farce, Fiction, and The Facts.

The characters in this update of “Death of a Salesman” are quirky and not always likable. But the themes of the story are compelling, from the enticement and disappointments of the American Dream to the definition of success, the endurability (or not) of love and life, and the inevitability of death.

A Calling for Charlie Barnes is all about the male lens on marriage, divorce, raising children, working, dreams, career and about being male in America. I won't spoil anything here by talking about clever narrative tricks but the choice of narrator is pure genius: Ferriss’s book differs from other books with similar themes in how he frames the story.

There are evil stepmothers, angry siblings, a foster child looking from the outside in, lots of ex-wives, a dropped out, aging hippie. Basically this is the contemporary American family presented in a very twisty and clever way.

He transforms the basic story into so much more. The narrator's thoughts are so….real. Ferris talks about fiction versus real life. He covers a lot, writes good dialogue; he does all the important things well.

Things did get slow somewhere near the middle but I'm glad I stuck with it. So worth the time.

For some reason, during this difficult Covid year, too many books are written about death and dying. Here is another one. Though this is told through the voice of a quirky narrator l I still found the topic hard to enjoy.

His portrait of Steady Boy, the ultimate loser schlamiel, is well done, this book just didn’t hold my interest.

Thank you Netgalley for this read.

I just couldn't get into this -- the narrator's voice was too quirky, too offputting. I quit before finishing.

Joshua Ferris is a ‘one-of-kind’ author. He’s a funny guy....
people either enjoy his humor — or they don’t.
I hadn’t read anything by him in years —
I’ve read three of his novels — [“Then We Came To The End”, “To Rise Against Again in a Decent Hour”, and “The Unnamed”],
but it seemed like years ago— another time — another world.
So....when I saw that Joshua had this new book ( due out in stores in September), ....I thought.... “Yes, Joshua Ferris was exactly the guy whose writing I was in the mood for” ——[having recently read one too many books on death and a Holocaust history book about Polish women from WWII]...
Absolutely....who couldn’t use a little diversion from heavy-land to funny-land, after a post covid-19....lockdown, house arrest brutal global year.

“A Calling for Charlie Barnes”, hits all the right marks: it’s funny, wicked laugh-out-loud moments, with deeper tragic truths about the human condition. In short: Joshua Ferris is a master of authentic & absurd....insightful as hell. I can’t think of another author who writes quite like him.
His characters are slightly annoying, cranky, crotchety, and sarcastic.

Truthfully....I think this is his best book next to “Then We Came to the End”.

This non-traditional father/storytelling son/search for the American dream/ “Progress is a myth I don’t know how to live without”.....novel ....
was a blast of brilliant enjoyment. ....
Charlie....and his wives....(rather his ex-wife’s), his present wife, his children, friends, clients, a shitty diagnosis, and a son who just might see things a little different about his middle-aged -faithful to his landline/newspaper, father....
is the perfect book for some of us ‘other’ sixty-ish — seventy-ish—year olds!
Besides the self-mocking, sneakily absurd— is a kind of intellectual epiphany about facing ourselves straight-on-that is actually very moving....and we feel the love.

A few teaser tasters excerpts:

“Steady Boy? No one had called him that in thirty, forty years. Back then, Charlie Barnes had found it hard to keep a job, either because the pay was bad, or the boss was a dick, or the work itself was a pain in the ass, and someone, an uncle, probably, dubbed him Steady Boy and the name stuck, the way ‘Tiny’ will stick to a big fat man. Steady Boy’s knocking off early again, Steady Boy’s calling in sick. . . that sort of thing”.

“Steady Boy was Mr. Charles A. Barnes now—sixty-eight years old that morning, a small businessman and father of four, and likely to live forever”.
Steady Boy had cancer.
“But hey, not just any cancer. The big kahuna of cancers: pancreatic.

“His third wife was fatefully
named Charley— note, however the minor yet tantalizing variant spelling, which effeminized his ho-hum handle to which wild sensual effect that it drove him crazy just thinking about it. They were Charlie & Charley of Danville, Illinois.
Charley was a local beauty.
She looked just like Ali MacGraw in ‘Love Story’ although her confidence and sass were more in keeping with the sitcom star of the day, that Mary Tyler Moore. But then Charley Proffit of Peoria, Illinois, decided to start sucking someone new, so the third time wasn’t the charm for Charlie Barnes after all. You had to marvel that he would marry a fourth time, let alone a fifth. . .but hope springeth eternal, and where hope is, change can’t be far behind. His fifth marriage was alive and well, and not simply because timewise, pancreatic cancer will always move faster than divorce proceedings. With his earlier wives, he was a work in progress: a scoundrel to some, a salvage job to others, a real slow learner all around. . .but here he was with the nurse at First Baptist, in a successful union at last. The kids didn’t care for her much, especially Marcy in a bad mood, but he couldn’t worry about that. He had this one thing going for him, and he wouldn’t fuck it up for the world”.

Smart, ... incredibly funny, incredibly tragic, incredibly human.....and a reminder we all want to love and be loved!

Thank You Little Brown and Company, Netgalley, and Joshua Ferris