Cartilage and Skin - Softcover

Rizza, Michael James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1938603184 ISBN 13: 9781938603181

Publisher: Starcherone Books, 2013

Synopsis

Cartilage and Skin is a dark literary thriller about a loner named Dr. Parker. He leaves his city apartment on an indefinite quest, not for love or friendship, but for "a drop of potency." Yet he is quickly beset by obstacles. Through a series of bad decisions, he ends up being stalked by a violent madman and scrutinized by the law for a crime he claims he did not commit.
Meanwhile, he finds himself becoming involved with a kind, generous divorced woman named Vanessa Somerset. She seems to him receptive, if not eager, to love. Little does she know, because he does not tell her, that he is on the run, his life is in shambles, and an absurd horror lurks close by, ready crash down on them.

About this title

About the Author:

MICHAEL JAMES RIZZA has an MA in creative writing from Temple University in Philadelphia and a PhD in American Literature from the University of South Carolina. He has published academic articles on Don DeLillo, Milan Kundera, Harold Frederic, and Adrienne Rich. His award winning novel Cartilage and Skin was published by Starcherone Books in November 2013. His short fiction has appeared in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Switchback, and Curbside Splendor. He has won various awards for his writing, including a fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts and the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. His scholarly monograph entitled The Topographical Imagination of Jameson, Baudrillard, Foucault is forthcoming with Davies Group, Publishers. He is currently at work on a funny, fast paced, literary novel called Domestic Men's Fiction. He teaches at Kean University. He lives in New Jersey with his wife Robin and their son Wilder, who was named after a character in DeLillo's White Noise.

Review:

"Rizza has a mesmerizing ability to get into the brain of an Asperger's-ridden loner who may or may not be giving us the whole story about his intentions and his past, which makes even the most banal and everyday actions and descriptions carry a tense, compacting weight." -Blake Butler, at Vice

"This is a world where a pile of rags can become a human being, where Parker can change from a villain to a victim to a hero and back again."  --Kelsie Hanh, at Necessary Fiction

"Rizza keeps us just off-balance enough to entice us to turn the page, trying to figure out what the uncanny Dr. Parker has actually done and what he has imagined." -Sheila M. Trask, at Forword Reviews
 

"Cartilage and Skin has it all: a fast-paced narrative, cool language, downtrodden characters, and addictive intrigue. Rizza writes with dark high-energy and philosophical flair about his nervous anti-hero on a self-destructive quest. The story shifts with every page, never losing momentum, always surprising us. Fascinating, ferocious reading." -- Deb Olin Unferth

"Cartilage And Skin is an astonishing debut novel, uncompromising, dark, part-Dostoevsky, part-Camus. It's a brilliant journey into the underside of the unconscious with no holds barred. The main character Dr. Parker's lonely generational angst, his ennui and self-loathing result in the irretrievable loss of his humanity. In this unsentimental challenge to predictable fictional assumptions, the possibility of transcendence has been lost forever. Not least, this is a page turner." --Joan Mellen, author of A Farewell To Justice

"Cartilage and Skin takes us on a strange, dark, enlightening tour of the slushy world we inhabit. My God, Michael James Rizza has written a fine debut novel full of suspense, comedy, and suspicious characters you won't soon forget."  --Alex Kudera, author of Fight for Your Long Day
"Rizza's style slides between grit and sophistication, just like his characters, echoing Nabokov and Nersesian. Readers won't like Dr. Parker, but they'll find his darkness strangely magnetic. Cue the Klimer and Heil score." --Brian Ray, author of Through the Pale Door and Unknown Female

About this edition

• Publisher: Starcherone Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1938603184
• ISBN 13: 9781938603181
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328