The Lucky Boy

The story starts in suburban Pennsylvania, then inner city Phila

The story starts in suburban Pennsylvania, then inner city Philadelphia of 1965. This is the journey of Seth McGrath, a boy who today would be given adderall by his parents, but the McGraths just want to ship off their problem child. They alternate beating or ignoring Seth. Seth goes to live with his Grandmother and I was hypnotized by her Catholic superstitions combined with old world potions. I don't want to spoil what happens but we follow this young man's journey from lying stealing and killing to something amazing. It is not religious. I just kept thinking something supernatural was happening to this kid.
Gerardo tells a story very differently from Charles Dickens and this Seth character is not Pip. Gerardo dances with words. I don't know this place, but it felt real. What would I call this a coming of age novel that is contemporary current and has a drum beat? Reminds me of beat poetry with Call of Duty modern gaming.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Dystopian, YA, Thrilling

A wonderful new kind of read. At first grabbed into this Dickenson bildungsroman, but this is NOT Pip of Great Expectations or David Copperfield. Seth MCGrath is a haunted soul with dark, light, and grey. This is not Victorian England; oh no, the story is suburban dystopia set in Philadelphia inner city 1965 when black and white are about to explode into race riots. That symbol of free pass and crushing guilt abides the story.
The prose is not easy and at the same moment enchanting as all hell. This is a poem, a beatnik story full of music. Someone else is going to say they don’t get it, they didn’t experience Catholic guilt and salvation in the same way. I think the individual voice Gerardo writes with has shades of transgressional fiction of Burroughs, James Joyce, Palahnuik…but it’s different. The natural world and wild fight scenes that are surreal.
There is this polyphonic quality in the story, the prose, the main characters, and the whole book.
Seth is a child who is beaten and abused. He’s a victim but the reader does not feel shame as he is also a criminal.

Gerardo has a complex way of showing his depravity and his grace. The child goes through elaborate efforts to make things, to become a world class athlete, to connect with others then destroys things he loves.
I loved the Grandmother character who orders her life around caring. Just caring. She’s a nurse, and Roman Catholic to the core. Her recipe for Seth’s cure is a simple balance of good and evil. She is able to curb Seth’s craziness, or is it ADHD or just Post Trauma confusion--
Do you call this book YA? Do you call it suburban dystopian? Do you call it adventure?

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Excellent Chilling Rollercoaster Ride

A glorious tale of love, madness and salvation. Follow the life of Seth McGrath, a boy who is discarded by his parents, blamed for a crime of burning the family home when they know he did not have anything to do with the fire. Seth is a boy who tinkers in building things and exists in a world where he ¿watches¿ but does not connect with others.

When he is shipped off to live with Grandmother in inner-city Philadelphia of 1965 he experiences Roman Catholic superstition, custom and spirituality. Grandmother is not concerned with racism of the time. Seth opens himself to friends for the first time in his life. When Grandmother suddenly dies, he is thrown back to the opposite lonely world of his pill popping debutante mother and dysfunctional neurosurgeon father.

Seth spins downward in a terrifying adventure. The young man makes every bad choice in his self-proclaimed attempt to go find his childhood true love. Seth will steal from everyone, arrange fights for betting money between homeless men, sell drugs to kids at school, and harm anyone who bullies him or makes fun of his horrible acne.

Will he turn his life around?
Highly recommend this chilling story written differently than I can tell you- literary but the fight scenes are poetic and the crimes we seem to watch with our souls tied.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Slam amazkng Slam amazing

The writing is visual musical punches in your core just nothing like it

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Transgressional Cult Fiction

I don't see any reviewers calling this what it is: transgressional cult fiction. It is written song lyric. I don't know poetry to tell you what kind it is, but it gets in your head and the words will come back to you. I don't read poetry because I don't understand it.
The author uses familiar images in wierd ways- like Step on a crack and you'll break your mother's back, but it doesn't say the old saying - it just makes you think of how we are in a pattern, a time, a culture that is often beyond our control.
This tortured Seth boy is beaten, ignored, nearly strangled to death abandoned by all until he takes the train by himself to the city to live with Grandmother. I was expecting her to be an imaginary angel or something strange is going to happen any second because he must be crazy or have ADHD and his one eye is messed up as if his brain isn't working, kind of Frankenstein like.
Then she dies, and he goes back and gets worse
Anyways I started liking this bad kid and wanting him to runaway.
Fight scenes, fighting games, making weapons, cheating and stealing and then drug selling- geez this kid. I still want him to get away with it all.
I think boys and men will read this, most women wouldn't like Seth. I can't believe a woman wrote this.

Dark like Brett Easton Ellis, strange like Chuck Palahnuik, action like a thriller, or maybe horror, with little details that grow, no it's not like them. It is one you should read.

Not tossing a coin, or counting cards this is mystical luck th

Not tossing a coin, or counting cards this is mystical luck the kind that drives us to change. An adolescent boy abused in the worst kind of childhood- Where a nanny smokes sage under his crib, the mother is high on pills and alcohol reading tea leaves and the father is a narcissistic neurosurgeon. Pops does a little sewing on the boy’s face to cover up a beating.
This is not the All American Ward and June Cleaver or the neighbors you grew up next door. Or maybe behind all our doors dark secrets remain? Mom sets the house on fire and blames the child, Dad throws away the hand painted Father’s Day gifts and substitutes someone else’s photograph. It is emotional and both coldhearted as Seth is.
What do you expect from a boy who is disillusioned? He acts out in the worst kinds of ways.
There are gorgeous depictions of Roman Catholicism, children dressing as priests, and Grandmother finding spiritual reality in bergamot, religious oils, candles and incense. Gerardo’s writing about the Church is mostly from the eyes of this boy. He prays for love and connection, as we all desire.
There are frightening secrets- violent street fights between victims paid and gambling their lives, a stupid lark to buy drugs, the stalking of a girl that he believes is his reason for living. Your anxiety calms with Gerardo’s edgy prose- she has a way of describing a bug on the windshield as an emerald that you don’t feel the story is shadowy.
Adventure, cult fiction, street fighting, and beautiful all at the same time

I liked this bad boy character. I could relate to his problems m

I liked this bad boy character. I could relate to his problems making friends and having everyone not understand his motives.

A man made by circumstance.

The young man in this story is no different than most of us. His parents live the the 1960's when it was O.K. to beat your children and fine for a father never to show love. I guess we are all damaged goods like this character. The thing is to survive it all and not to hold on to grudges and a negative past. The man achieves greatness in his ability to keep working through every problem than comes his way.
This is an adult book not because it is R rated, it is thought provoking and not about vampires.
Is the story morally correct that even when he makes terrible turns in the road he is not held to the death penalty or put away. I don't know how I forgave him, because normally I would not sympathize with a bad guy. But maybe he's not so evil after all.

Cool Book

Being a teenager is hard. Being this kid is awful. Sometimes all you need is friends to make it through high school alive.

I don’t know why some reviewer talked about Dickens here b

I don’t know why some reviewer talked about Dickens here because Gerardo doesn’t write like him at all and this is NOT Victorian. I think the coming of age topic relates, but NOTHING else. I liked this strange kid in this story. He's crazy. He can’t seem to make the right choices. There are a couple frightening chapters. The character thinks he is chasing true love, but he is just running away from real life into a dream. The book has some funny parts that I liked – he makes forts out of stolen lumber to try to make friends, they make these priest costumes out of colored newspaper ( the funny papers) and that he’s on a swim team and he saves himself and saves someone with his accidental ability to keep working hard. James N.

Transgressional cult fiction

Transgressional masterpiece