Man Gone Down: A Novel | Michael Thomas

Man Gone Down: A Novel | Michael Thomas | Yes it is one of the top ten books of 2007!!

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Man Gone Down: A N...

	Man Gone Down: A Novel Michael Thomas Grove Press, Black Cat, 2006 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Evoking the work of great American masters such as Ralph Ellison, but distinctly original, Michael Thomas? first novel is a beautifully written, insightful, and devastating account of a young black father of three in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. On the eve of the unnamed narrator?s thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, estranged from his white Boston Brahmin wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend?s six-year-old child. With only four days before he?s due in to pick up his family, he must make some sense out of his life. Alternating between his past?as an inner city child bused to the suburbs in the 1970?s?and a present where he is trying mightily to keep his children in private schools, we learn of his mother?s abuses, his father?s abandonment, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is an extraordinary debut about what it feels like to be pre-programmed to fail in life?and the urge to escape that sentence.

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Painful but Worth It

I read this book very slowly, because sometimes it was just too painful. Michael Thomas takes you under the brown skin of a young man separated from his white wife and three children while trying to earn enough money for rent on an apartment and the private school tuition his wife expects. Its stream of conscious narration is very ambitious. Sometimes, he seems to channel Ellison's Invisible Man or Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land, but you know it's present-day by the cultural references. I particularly like a few scenes where he interacts with people who rank below him (he buys a beer for a woman strung out on drugs) and above him (there's a great golf outing to a Long Island club.) Each scene and his ruminations on jazz and being bused to a white suburban school build create a complex portrait of the character's interior life.

While his wife, a New England brahmin, knows of his past--his disturbed alcoholic mother is dead, his less-disturbed but passive alcoholic father still lives--she has a kind of blind faith in him that doesn't take much note of the complexities of race and class. The person who comes closest to sharing his experiences and point of view is his one black friend from high school, who is in and out of detox.

But the part of the story that brought me to tears were his memories of the births of his children and the telephone conversations he has with them while he struggles. There were times he almost convinced me that he would leave them, and I think if Thomas had written this book in the sixties, the character would. But he finds another way through his dilemma that has more to do with his growing maturity than with external circumstances, and I closed the book wondering how all the characters survived the winter.

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Yes it is one of the top ten books of 2007!!

This was an amazing book!! I found it difficult to read at times. This has the lyrical flow of James Baldwin tied into the time shifts you would find in a Toni Morrison novel. Don't let the free association fool you. It is a great story for understanding the mental and social struggles an African American goes through. Especially one tied into an inter-racial relationship.

The core question I found rising to the top of my thoughts was; "Should I stay or should I go?" Men of all backgrounds will understand the fear and doubt associated with the idea of failing to provide for your family. We often ask: What do we do when things just don't work out for the best? What do we do when we just don't have the answer? The author eloquently puts these thoughts and doubts onto paper. The author also reminds us that regardless of how much we try not to acknowledge race our simple day to day thoughts are sprinkled with race based associations. Just look at the very public Obama campaign in 2008. As an African American male you find its always there but the key is to learn how to navigate the waters without excessive anger or unfounded fear.

I look forward to Michael Thomas' next book I'm sure he'll strip away another social layer just lurking below the surface of America.

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Man muddles through

Nice but damaged man spends four days trying to scrape together enough money to rent apartment and pay for private school for kids apparently too precious for public school is too stressed and broke to eat but manages not to drink (one day at a time), sends mother's ashes and dead pet fish out to sea in a burning paper boat, and (spoiler coming) via a lucky golf swing and a little cheating wins thousands of dollars from some rich guys. Story woven around shimmering desciptions of digging out a decrepit town house sub-basement, a late night run from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back, encounters with snooty admissions lady and wary Bengladesh clerk behind plexiglass in ghetto bodega and other stuff does not entirely make up for the fact that the ratio of musings to plot advancement is ultimately too high. I skipped ahead and missed an important plot development--when did the fish die? But in the final analysis he's such a nice man I'm glad he doesn't go down.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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