The Mortician's Apprentice - Hardcover

Demarinis, Rick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393036626 ISBN 13: 9780393036626

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1994

Synopsis

Ozzie Santee, an eighteen-year-old high school graduate in 1953 California, falls in love with Colleen Vogel, daughter of San Diego's most successful undertaker

About this title

About the Author

Rick DeMarinis teaches creative writing at the University of Texas, El Paso.

Reviews

DeMarinis's intelligent, engaging, often funny novel--a sort of West Coast, blue-collar Catcher in the Rye --takes satiric aim at '50s Americana while chronicling the maturation of Ozzie Santee. Raised by a casually promiscuous mother and a succession of stepfathers, high-school rebel Ozzie is graduating, unsure of what he wants to do with his life but cynical and pessimistic about his prospects. Even when he is pursued by Colleen Vogel, daughter of San Diego's preeminent mortician, he proves reluctant to set a wedding date and to embrace his fate as her father's apprentice. The Korean War is lurching to a conclusion, but its effects are everywhere: Ozzie's best friend, Art, marries and has a child to avoid the draft; San Diego's economy is dominated by defense dollars; and Art's father is in danger of being deported for suspected subversive activities. DeMarinis accords his characters grace and dignity. Even Colleen, a scheming temptress determined to become a Donna Reed-ish wife, is portrayed with understanding. Yet DeMarinis ( The Year of the Zinc Penny ) is not at the top of his form here. He introduces an alter ego for Ozzie who seems gratuitous to the story; there are too many passages where the momentum dips; and the ending is rushed and anticlimactic. But his mastery of character nuances, his precise and pungent language and the novel's iron-clad sense of time and place make up for a handful of sins. First serial to GQ; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A humorous look at a young rebel's fight against the deadening American dream of Southern California in the Eisenhower era. Ozzie, the 18-year-old narrator of DeMarinis's tenth book (The Voice of America, 1991, etc.), is desperately afraid of being ``the stale turd on the sparkling lawn of the prosperous nation.'' It's 1953 in San Diego and many of Ozzie's fellow high school graduates are getting married, starting families, and going to work for the defense industry. His one college-bound friend is off to study physics with dreams of making H-bombs. Ozzie's girlfriend is putting pressure on him to get married, and this means becoming an apprentice in her family business--the Darling-Vogel funeral home. Ozzie doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, but it certainly doesn't involve any of the options facing him. He passes time riding his motorcycle through the hills, bodysurfing, running over the Mexican border for drunken debauches, and, especially, listening to hot bop. Complicating matters is the fact that Ozzie has no father, just a series of stepfathers that his young mother quickly tires of, so he must go looking for fatherly advice in all sorts of unlikely places. As usual, DeMarinis expertly uses his deadpan humor to create hilarious and surreal situations with memorable one-line zingers. Yet from page one, the reader is worried not about whether Ozzie is going to get trapped into an awful life (he seems very aware of its awfulness), but how he is going to get out of it--in other words, there's a lot riding on the ending. And after a 288-page build-up, the conclusion is encapsulated in a not very satisfying 12-page summary. Rebel Without a Cause Lite--less filling, but leaves one longing for full-bodied satiation. (First serial to GQ; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Raging hormones aside, Ozzie Santee is not really sure whether he wants to marry the mortician's daughter. The setting is Southern California, and even while the cold war is brewing up a storm, Ozzie's love of bebop manages to muffle the simple fact of his lifethat he doesn't have a clue as to the next step once he graduates from high school. DeMarinis creates a classic protagonist in his trenchant portrayal of Ozzie, son of the much-married Mitzi, who has wandered the country to settle on a home in Paradise (aka San Diego). This taut and memorable tour de force, concocted with equal parts humor and pathos disguised as outrageous behavior, follows Ozzie as he careens along a crash course doing everything possible to prolong his adolescence. Alice Joyce

In this appealing coming-of-age novel, Ozzie Santee is an 18-year-old high school senior in 1953 San Diego whose life revolves around thoughts of sex and his beloved jazz. With the Cold War raging, his fellow graduating seniors are planning on college or marriage in order to avoid the draft. Ozzie, who thinks he would be happy living in a beach shack with his jazz records, unexpectedly falls in lust with Colleen Vogel, well-to-do daughter of a funeral home director. Colleen begins to guide him toward marriage, family, and an assured position in the funeral business, with Ozzie fighting every step of the way. His rebellion takes the form of trips to Mexico for alcoholic binges and prostitutes, followed by swims in the ocean to clear his head. DeMarinis (The Voice of America, LJ 4/15/91), who has created a wonderful character in Ozzie, has succeeded in capturing a young man's feelings of confusion in the Cold War era. Recommended for most collections.
Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393036626
• ISBN 13: 9780393036626
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250