The Karma Charmer - Hardcover

Palmer, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517599198 ISBN 13: 9780517599198

Publisher: Harmony, 1994

Synopsis

Still a hippie twenty-five years after Woodstock, Howser falls in love with a beautiful twenty-something college business major, but their relationship is complicated by her ambitions and the arrival of his ten-year-old love child. A first novel. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

There's a funky domestic intimacy about this account of a middle-aged hippie trying to hang on to his youthful ideals and his gorgeous 21-year-old girlfriend who wants a job on Wall Street. Contrived yippie vs. yuppie conflict? In part, but Dick Howser, the first-person narrator of ad-exec Palmer's first novel, is a shrewd and engaging character. He's overweight, runs a junk store in Woodstock, N.Y., and is deep into midlife crisis and annoying power games, but he also has a heart, taking in both Leslie Zack, a senior at the local college who needs lodging after her dorm burns down, and his long-lost ten-year-old son Howard, a love child, who has hated him for having been an absentee dad and who shows up with his mother's ashes stored in a peanut brittle can. Dick, your basic lonely guy, adores both kids; but the sex scenes between him and the rather vacuous Leslie are more acrobatic than emotional, and the prose is excessively purple at times. More heartfelt is the bonding that finally takes place between father and son. ``Howard, please forgive me! Please let me love you!'' Dick tearfully implores. Howard, meanwhile, has his eye on Leslie as a replacement mom. He joins Dad in a complex conspiracy to keep her at home, protected from naughty New York City--whose latest serial criminal is the dreaded ``Butt Biter.'' One strategy by the senior Howser involves a ``love strike,'' in which Dick ignores Leslie, assuming a ``Shamanic State of Consciousness''--separating his mind from his body. But eventually the varied plans backfire badly, in large part because Dick, fearing bad karma throughout eternity, needs to confess. A crude, sexist, sometimes homophobic fairy tale, but often great fun--like the mud of Woodstock Nation. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Advertising executive Palmer's first novel is an entertaining, romantic tale that's set in today's Woodstock, N.Y., but isn't far in spirit from the Festival itself. Narrator Dick Howser is a '60s holdover, a junk dealer who thinks of himself as a recycler, "moving things from one person who doesn't need them to another person who does." Howser's carefree existence is shaken when he takes in Leslie Zak, 21, a temporary boarder from the local college. The two soon become lovers--but with a catch: Leslie plans to leave Howser and Woodstock for a Wall Street career when she graduates in the spring. Complicating the situation is the unexpected arrival of Howser's 10-year-old son, Howard, unseen for the past seven years. After some initial chaos, Howser and Howard begin to get along, but, as the date of Leslie's departure nears, the two grow increasingly desperate to keep her, concocting various schemes involving brainwashing, ex-psychics, Oriental sex manuals and an "Ozolator" device that "creates good vibrations" by manipulating a room's ozone level. The author avoids simple characterization, creating in Howser a true contemporary hero, flawed but endearing, trying to make his way in a world that has grown much more complex since 1969. A knack for jaunty humor and a brisk plot also enliven this novel, which bodes well for Palmer's future efforts.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0517599198
• ISBN 13: 9780517599198
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 245