Eric Goodman
Reviews
Praise for Child of My Right Hand
A gay adolescent boy’s coming of age tests the social fabric of a small Midwestern town in Goodman’s poignant fourth novel, inspired by his experience with his own son’s sexuality. Simon Barish is the openly gay son of academics Genna and Jack, who relocate from Cincinnati to take teaching positions in Tipton, Ohio. The pervasive smalltown homophobia and looming threat of violence keep the couple and Simon’s younger sister, Lizzie, constantly on edge, while Simon’s sweet but raunchy efforts to find his first boyfriend could land him in jail if he picks the wrong would-be paramour. Compelling parental subplots emerge when Jack, a social scientist, abandons his study of Nazi eugenics to examine the role of heredity in gay children, and Genna embarks on a search for her birth father. The book’s greatest strength is its character writing, with Goodman compassionately presenting Simon’s erratic charms as well as the foibles of Genna and Jack, each of whom is well developed enough to carry the book. The entertaining cast of gay secondary figures who surface on a family trip to San Francisco balance the narrative, softening the overall tension. Though the near-tragic ending feels rushed and formulaic, Goodman eloquently addresses many of the cultural conflicts that help define American family life in the early 21st century.
—Publishers Weekly
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When Simon Barish, 17, comes out of the closet, it’s certainly no surprise to his parents, but he is harassed at school in the conservative midwestern town where he lives, and one day there’s a cross burning in the yard. It turns out that Simon’s mom’s biological dad is gay—she’s never contacted him—and the family trip to San Francisco to meet him and his long-term partner in the gay capital of the world is a turning point for everyone. Woven into the story is the scientific controversy about whether homosexuality is hereditary. Simon’s dad is a scientist, and he’s researching whether finding a gay gene would lead to more abortions. More gripping than the intellectual arguments is the honesty of the personal drama. Simon is wonderfully drawn, from his feelings of lust and romance through his rising excitement at landing the lead in the school musical. Best of all are the family scenes, from mutual irritation to furious quarrel to soppy embrace. With heartbreaking honesty, Goodman shows that they love each other, even if each of them can be “a royal pain.”
—Hazel Rochman, Booklist
"A powerful,
affecting, utterly unpretentious novel about love and loss. Goodman here
achieves the potent, stripped-down lyricism of Raymond Carver's best work.
This is a novel both heartbreaking and beautiful."
—T. Coraghessan Boyle
"Child of My Right Hand is Eric
Goodman's finest achievement as a writer thus far, a fresh, powerful,
intriguing novel that is gripping in its narrative, refreshing in its
humor, and poignantly wise about the vagaries and disloyalties of the
heart. His portrait of a high school boy coming to terms with his homosexuality
is perceptive and compassionate, and his stunning accuracy of observation
extends to the subordinate doubts and sexual explorations that trouble
many marriages. A small college town in Ohio is rendered with a vitality
and frankness that Sherwood Anderson would envy, but Mr. Goodman is not
out to disarm or shock with some latter-day Peyton Place. Rather, with
unblinking realism and abiding sympathy he wishes to convey the turmoil
and emotional dislocations that can affect everyday family life even among
those who feel their education, stability, and high status may have spared
them such consternations. This is a really good book."
—Ron Hansen
Eric Goodman, who directs the creative-writing program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, has written a fourth novel that gives full voice to the agonies of adolescence and the bigotry and tensions that can divide a small town.
Jack and Genna Barish have long suspected that their son, Simon, was gay, but nobody is actually forced to discuss his sexual orientation until the family moves from Cincinnati to suburban Tipton, to live closer to the university where the parents teach.
Before the move, Simon had attended a performing-arts high school where he excelled in singing and had a tight-knit group of friends. Within the conservative confines of his new town, however, the school’s jocks— who proudly don Confederate-flag belt buckles—begin threatening the happy-go-lucky boy with menacing hallway taunts.
Simon, who has come out to his parents and no longer feels compelled to cover up his sexuality at school, relies on humor—and his 240-pound frame—to coast through potentially dangerous situations. These scenes are a marvel, as Goodman has a near-supernatural ability to transport himself inside the teenage mind. And he moves equally deftly between different narrative voices, employing both Genna and Jack as storytellers.
Jack the academic struggles to accept his son’s sexuality through the only approach he’s familiar with: a scientific one. Even as he searches for a “gay gene” and tries to fight his philandering ways, Jack is so richly drawn that readers will find themselves striving to sympathize with him.
“Child of My Right Hand” has several ancillary plot lines that carry readers into a far deeper understanding of what makes Goodman’s characters tick, but the book’s goose-bump moment, the place where readers will be cheering aloud, occurs when the entire family heads west to San Francisco so that Simon can “experience a gay-friendly world” first-hand.
The first thing Simon noticed, still in the car, were rainbow banners arching over the street, then rainbow flags in all the shop windows. And men, men everywhere. Tall men, short ones, white men, brown ones, bald men holding hands. Men with bare muscular arms wrapped around each other. The Barish family rental coasted down Castro. Simon’s left leg twitched so badly he thought he’d explode into song."Whoops, I did it again!"
Simon, who “could sing before he could talk,” eventually steals the show in his school’s performances, and he also grows just as lovable to readers, who won’t soon forget the sweet “right-hand” child imbued with all the adorable quirks of any teenage son floundering through those first heart-stopping forays into adulthood.
If a late Simon-in-peril denouement startles readers, it’s clearly meant to. Perhaps this unexpected plot twist is the author’s emotional reaction to the events in Laramie, Wyo., and if there’s a bit of an agenda here, it’s easy to forgive. After all, Goodman proves that even painful stories can have a happy ending.
—Reviewed By Andrea Hoag, Special to the Star Tribune
Andrea Hoag also reviews for Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She lives in Lawrence, Kan.
Praise for In Days of Awe
"In Days of Awe
is that rare novel indeed, a resonant contemplation of ideas weded to
superb storytelling, a thoughtful page-turner--and
not just for baseball fans, either."
—L.A. Style.
"With In Days of Awe, Eric Goodman stakes his claim as one of L.A.'s liveliest
novelists."
—L.A. Weekly
"Immensely appealing
. . . .funny, suspenseful. . . .readers will enjoy this introspective
yet briskly paced novel . . . .
—Publishers
Weekly