Fool

“For Christ sake don’t become a fluffmeister” are the last words Barnaby Griswold’s father utters to him. But despite trying to turn out otherwise, Barnaby is indisputably a fool. A well-educated, well-connected investments player on the one hand, but an entitled money-driven fool on the other.

Barnaby Griswold’s life changes almost overnight when he’s found to have acted perhaps slimily (but not illegally) by selling short a stock. His wife deserts him, his daughters disown him, and he loses his final and favorite home. All he has left is a similarly deserted mother-in-law, in Oklahoma of all places, and of course the enemies who went belly up on his final deal.

At forty-six, disgraced and broke and lonely, Barnaby must repair his life and maybe, just maybe, he’ll learn that doing the foolish thing may lead to his redemption.

Out of print for more than a decade, Frederick G. Dillen’s comic and now timely novel about an unlikely hero is being reissued as part of librarian and NPR commentator Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries series.

Frederick G. Dillen was born in Greenwich Village to a family on fire, raised in a New Hampshire boarding school, and graduated from Stanford. To pay for his writing, he worked odd jobs from Lahaina to Taos and New York to L.A., managing a hotel and running a fake ranch, carrying plates and shilling for business. His short fiction has appeared in literary quarterlies and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. His Hero was named Best First Novel of 1994 by the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Dillen and his wife Leslie are parents of two grown daughters and three dogs and have settled, for good they hope, in New Mexico.

Nancy Pearl is a librarian and lifelong reader. She regularly comments on books on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Her books include 2003’s Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason; 2005’s More Book Lust: 1,000 New Reading Recommendations for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason; 2007’s Book Crush: For Kids and Teens; Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Interest; and 2010’s Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers. Among her many awards and honors are the 2011 Librarian of the Year Award from Library Journal, the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, the 2010 Margaret E. Monroe Award from the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association, and the 2004 Women’s National Book Association Award, given to “a living American woman who…has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation.”