The Martin Chronicles

by John Fried

Overview

A powerful and heartfelt coming-of-age novel that follows Martin Kelso as he grows up in 1980s New York and faces the magic of first experiences, as well as the heartbreak of hard-won life lessons.

Martin Kelso's comfortable world starts to change at the age of eleven. Girls get under his skin in ways he never noticed before. His cousin Evie, who used to be Marty's closest confidante—the one who taught him the right way to eat a pizza and how to catch tadpoles—has grown up into a stranger, mysterious and unpredictable. Marty and his best friends once inhabited fantasy worlds of their own making, full of cowboys and cops and robbers, where the heroes always won the day. But now, as neighborhood kids are attacked on their walk to school, they find themselves wanting to play a new game that better prepares them for real life.

As life changes quickly and Marty feels less secure with himself, the difference between games and reality, friend and foe, and right from wrong becomes much more difficult to distinguish. At the same time, this new world offers possibilities as exciting as they are frightening.

This poignant debut perfectly captures the intense emotion, humor, and earnestness of young adulthood as Marty, age eleven to seventeen, navigates a series of life-changing firsts: first kiss, first enemy, first loss, and, ultimately, his first awareness that the world is not as simple a place as he had once imagined.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538729830
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/08/2019
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	215,090
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

John Fried teaches creative writing at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He received his MFA from Warren Wilson College's Program for Writers. His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals, including The Gettysburg Review, North American Review, and Columbia: A Journal of Arts and Literature. Prior to teaching, he was a magazine writer and editor in New York, and his work appeared in various publications, including the New Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, New York, Time, and Real Simple.

Greg Baglia is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.

Editorial Reviews

10/08/2018
Set in Manhattan’s Upper West Side in the 1980s, Fried’s uneven debut novel follows Marty Kelso as he ages from tween to teen, beginning with him in sixth grade and ending with his high school graduation. After a water pipe bursts at their “sister middle school,” Marty and his best friends, Dave and Max, are confronted with attending a school with girls for the first time. On top of this seismic shift, Marty’s cousin Evie has also temporarily moved in to his house after the death of her father. Drifting episodically from Mr. Harding’s middle school English classroom to summer camp to the brink of his graduation, Marty sees his once-steady friendships become strained as romantic relationships come into play. Unfortunately, an overabundance of cliché causes the tale to reflect the awkwardness of its pubescent protagonist a bit too closely. Rain hammers an air conditioner “like a drumroll”; a rifle fires like “a firecracker going off.” However, when the excessive simile usage settles down, Fried’s lighthearted humor shines through, as when Marty gets stuck in an elevator with an elderly neighbor: “I reached out and felt her hand. Ice cold. Dead, I worried. Terrific, I thought.” While Fried’s novel offers playful moments and an evocative atmosphere, these vignettes never come together into a fully formed story. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Wise and winning,
THE MARTIN CHRONICLES is a sumptuous evocation of those adolescent afternoons when every moment was equally fraught and full of possibility. A charming,
marvelous debut." —Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author of The Underground Railroad

"A beautiful debut. THE
MARTIN CHRONICLES transforms a series of adolescent snapshots into a raw, unforgettable mosaic."—Stephen Chbosky, New York Times bestselling author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"John Fried's debut is a funny, tender, honest coming-of-age story, brimming with heart. THE MARTIN CHRONICLES is about first love and family and loss, but also, set on the Upper
West Side of Manhattan in the '80s, it's a nostalgic look into the past and, in the end, a love story about that specific place and time."—Julianna Baggott, nationally bestselling author of The Seventh Book of Wonders

"Fried's lighthearted humor shines through...offers playful moments and an evocative atmosphere."—Publishers Weekly

"Fried infuses every page with warmth and wonder. The setting on the bustling streets of 1980s Manhattan is the perfect mirror for Marty's swirling emotions. Fans of Brady Udall and Matthew Norman will appreciate Marty's honesty, humor, and angst as he discovers his rightful place in his family, at school, and in his social circle."—Booklist

From the Publisher

2018-10-02

A coming-of-age novel, set in New York in the 1980s, that unfolds as a series of episodes.

Fried's first book does not break new territory so much as it revisits familiar ground. The novel revolves around Martin Kelso, 11 as the story opens and 17 when it comes to a close. During those six years, he moves from sixth grade at a boys school that has gone coed to the threshold of college. The journey is insulated by Manhattan privilege, but there is, as there must be, unanticipated bumpiness. "For my friend Kevin Johnson's thirteenth birthday," Fried opens one chapter, "his father ordered pizzas and a case of Coke, and then handed out Playboy magazines." Later, Martin experiences a first kiss with his cousin Evie, four years his senior, who is the novel's agent of chaos, a character who trails disruption in her wake. "This was the Evie I remembered—an emotional spinning top," Martin reflects. "I never knew quite where she would come to rest." That question, and Evie's continued machinations, ebb and flow throughout the book. It's an interesting strategy, a way to inject more risk into the narrative, but in the end, it backfires a little bit. This is because Evie is a more compelling character than her cousin, who seems most alive when she is around. Without her, Martin learns to run the elevator in his apartment building during an operators' strike and almost gets arrested after buying beer. He is used by a young woman looking to get back at her ex-boyfriend. He hangs out with his friends. None of it sticks, however, or more accurately, none of it comes fully to life. The scenes resound with a kind of nodding recognition, charged less from within than by the recollections of its readers, the memories of adolescence they provoke. Only when Fried returns to Evie and her troubles does the book re-engage again.

"None of this really matters," one character says, and it's hard not to feel as if she is referring to the novel itself.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More