Mourning Wood: A Novel - Hardcover

Paisner, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566252091 ISBN 13: 9781566252096

Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004

Synopsis

Best-selling author Daniel Paisner makes an indelible impression with a moving and funny novel reminiscent of Carl Hiassen and Peter Lefcourt. From its dramatic and humorous opening to its touching conclusion, Mourning Wood hooks readers with its eccentric characters and offbeat sense of humor.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Paisner is one of the busiest collaborators in publishing. He has helped to write dozens of bestselling and headline-making books with prominent entertainers, athletes, business leaders, and politicians, including Whoopi Goldberg, Anthony Quinn, Geraldo Rivera, New York governor George Pataki, former New York mayor Ed Koch, and FDNY battalion commander Richard Picciotto, whose account of his epic tour of duty on September 11, 2001, Last Man Down, became an international bestseller. On his own, he has written non-fiction books on baseball, television, small-town America, and other national pastimes. Mourning Wood is his second first novel. He lives on Long Island, New York.

From Publishers Weekly

Paisner, a frequent collaborator on celebrity bios, plays a cheeky game of cat-and-mouse in his debut novel, which revolves around a famous but fading movie actor who fakes his death and creates a bizarre new existence for himself. Terence Wood is the thespian protagonist whose encounter with the muddy, icy roads of coastal Maine proves disastrous when his SUV goes off a cliff and into the water. Wood survives the accident, but instead of reporting it and providing the media with more celebrity scandal, the Maine native decides to hide out in a nearby fishing village, where he lands an unlikely gig working as a costumed lobster in a local theme park and falls for an overweight but attractive diner waitress called Grace, who is nicknamed "Two Stools." Meanwhile, an obituary writer for a prominent Maine paper named Axel Pimletz lands a book deal to polish an autobiographical manuscript Wood left behind, after fraudulently pasting together a final newspaper tribute to Wood. Pimletz struggles to finish the book with a libidinous assist from one of Wood's ex-wives. Paisner's terse but breezy style makes for a fast, engaging read, and Wood has more than enough character to carry the novel, especially with some strong comic relief from the hapless, bumbling Pimletz. But the ex-wife gags fall flat; another tangent involving the travails of Wood's son, Norman, is perfunctory; and despite Pimletz's funny moments, the potential of the biography subplot goes largely unrealized. Paisner recovers nicely with a sharp, funny ending, but the novel's various parts never quite cohere.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1566252091
• ISBN 13: 9781566252096
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300