Make Me Work

With his first collection of stories, Men Under Water, Lombreglia established himself as a writer and humorist of the first rank. Now he offers nine stories that confirm his reputation as "an astute observer of off-beat situations. . . . At once comic, sad, and enlightening" (Ann Beattie).

Nine engaging short stories by the author of Men Under Water show thoughtful, conflicted protagonists striving for equilibrium in their personal relationships and finding hints of meaning in the acutely perceived oddities of contemporary American life. Living primarily on the fringes of academia, media and the arts, the characters are not quite comfortable with either their surroundings or the times. Lisa, a classic-rock disc jockey in small-town Vermont, plays blues songs to get over her ex-husband, an Elvis fanatic. Walter, an actor by trade, writes copy for industrial videos in Boston and discovers the miracle of birth against a backdrop of high-tech laser pranks. Karl, a moderately famous composer back in the 1950s, now labors over a piece inspired by his heart arrhythmia and grumbles as his young protegee/lover heads to New York to pursue performance art. Hoping to escape her drug-addicted son and head for Florida, Josephine buries an icon of St. Joseph in her lawn to expedite the sale of her house. Although he sometimes overdoes the '60s nostalgia, Lombreglia combines a sharp eye for weird, resonant detail with a fluid, understated narrative style to achieve work that is both serious and farcical, outlandish and immediate.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lombreglia's second collection, half from The New Yorker and The Atlantic, is no less witty and accomplished than his first, Men Under Water (1990). His offbeat humor survives the polished surfaces of these nine superb tales, with their Zeitgeisty gestures. Pop music is an index to character in the delightful ``One- Woman Blues Revival,'' in which a young female deejay, estranged from her Elvis-fanatic husband, finds a hero in a Polish ‚migr‚ mechanic, who plays a mean blues riff. Music also figures in ``This is a Natural Product of the Earth,'' the story of an East Coast amateur musician who follows his girlfriend to California, where he reunites with an old lover, herself lost amidst the Sixties burnouts in Berkeley. Two stories set on college campuses actually breathe life into a somewhat wheezy genre: ``Can You Dance to It?'' is a clever piece about a bunch of professors who force a local bartender to marry their colleague, an Argentinean philosopher whom he's gotten pregnant and who's threatened with deportation. And ``Every Good Boy Deserves Favor'' follows a former music prodigy's later academic career. Meanwhile, Catholicism and ethnicity provide context to a number of pieces: in ``A Half Hour with God's Heroes,'' a divorced woman who works as a chef turns to superstition to help her sell her house so that she can leave behind her bungled life in Boston--her larcenous husband and her junkie son. ``Piltdown Man, Later Proved to Be a Hoax'' is a boy's tale worthy of Salinger, in which the famous fraud becomes a symbol of life's disappointments. The title piece is an unconventional romance between an aging Italian hipster and a tough-talking beauty from the North End of Boston. Finally, two linked stories about a group of thirtysomething video producers wonderfully explore contemporary relations. Lombreglia brings a unique sensibility to familiar material- -smart and stylish and, surprisingly, profound. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In Men Under Water ( LJ 3/15/90), Lombreglia exhibited a sharp pen that cut straight to the heart of a matter and an equally keen wit that viewed each situation and its participants with wry humor. The nine stories in this volume follow the same pattern, focusing on slightly quirky people adding their own interpretations to everyday life. In "Late Early Man," a video producer finishes up a rush project while keeping in touch by cellular phone as his wife gives birth in the back seat of a Bonneville on the way to the hospital. The title story shows two feuding friends reconciled by a haircut, although a good Italian meal sets them up to begin again. Best of all is "Can You Dance to It?" in which three philosophy professors contemplate saving a colleague from deportation by marrying her. At once offbeat and serious, these wonderful stories cannot fail to charm the reader.
- Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The protagonist of most of these nine short stories (some of which appeared in the New Yorker and the Atlantic) is a contemporary guy's poor thing. He's middle-aged (or thereabouts) and sensitive to the point of inarticulateness (especially about his personal life), but in Lombreglia's hands, he is also trying hard to stop all this sleepwalking and get back on track. Both "Late Early Man" and "Heavy Lifting" involve the same set of characters--videographers--and narrator Walter, who is really an actor, not a scriptwriter, and who is just there for the ride (and wildly funny rides they are). In this first collection, Lombreglia takes fragile, timorous moments and injects them with humor, pathos, and hope, often the hope that someone else will take responsibility for what is happening. In "One-Woman Blues Revival," a disc jockey finds her life (and car) vastly improved by a Polish mechanic; and in the title story, a man in the middle of a haircut is stunned to see his old nemesis walk in and pick up scissors. Lombreglia can turn a phrase, and a situation, to perfection. Eloise Kinney