From Rockaway (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

Jill Eisenstadt is the author of the novels From Rockaway, Kiss Out, and Swell. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Boston Review, New York Magazine, and BOMB. She lives in Brooklyn.

Eisenstadt's fast-paced first novel chronicles the coming-of-age of four working-class Irish youths growing up in Far Rockaway during the early 1980s. The spirit of the time and place is well captured, and the numerous beach scenes (three of the main characters work as summer lifeguards) are extremely evocative. The characters lead emotionally eventful lives: Alex struggles to escape "Rotaway" on a college scholarship; Timmy searches for the father who abandoned him when he was an infant; Chowderhead temporarily adopts a precocious nine-year-old boy. Still, the reader waits for some major, unifying development. Suddenly emerging as accomplished in her craft, Eisenstadt closes with three excellent chapters, tying in the random elements and providing an unexpected yet satisfying finish. Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
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