THE MELANCHOLY STRUMPET MASTER - Zeb Beck


 Gilmore (Gil) Crowell is working on his doctoral thesis - and has been for perhaps a bit too long.  He's doing an anthropological study of the prostitutes of Tijuana.  He pays them for their time and then only talks with them, asking questions and recording their responses. To earn money to pay for these interviews, Gil teaches English in a jail. The income does not equal the expenses and Gil struggles to keep up. But at the same time, he is almost addicted to his visits with the streetwalkers down south despite never taking advantage of their professional services.

In looking for another method to pay for his visits, Gil builds the workers a website (or, rather, has one built for them since he has no computer skills himself) but the idea is met with much resistance from the girls to whom he offers the chance to 'advertise'.

But things go south (metaphorically speaking) for Gil. First with his job when he's fired, then with his dissertation as his one and only supporter leaves, and then with his apartment as his landlord kicks him out. And he has fallen in love with one of his subjects.  Coming of age gets harder to do the older you are when it happens. Fortunately for Gil, good things do sometimes happen to good people.

Author Zeb Beck has written a wry and (to use his own term) melancholic comedy. Nothing here will make you laugh out loud. In fact you're more likely to agree with those around Gil and think he deserves whatever he gets.  Not because he's a jerk or in anyway bad - on the contrary, Beck goes out of his way to make sure we understand that Gil is a good guy.  But he really lacks drive or ambition.

Because of this, I really went back and forth on my feelings for our protagonist.  I didn't dislike him, but I really wanted him to take some responsibility for SOMEthing in his life.  He is really obsessed with talking with the prostitutes in Tijuana and we never really learn why that it is. We do, however, see that they have more drive and ambition than he.

SPOILER ALERT ... things do fall in place for Gil at the very end, and while an argument could be made that it comes about because of action he took (action that I would argue is pretty unrealistic but in line with this sort of comedy), he still hasn't really stepped up to be responsible for anything and has simply gotten lucky. Is it lucky that there's interest in his dissertation?  I think so, especially given that we really don't know much about it other than the very general subject.

I will note that I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would once I had the book in hand.  I'm not a fan of the cover art (knowing nothing about the author or the story, seeing this on a shelf would not have gotten me to pick it up to check it out) and I think the word 'melancholy' in the title might make it a hard sell.  Who wants to spend time with someone who's 'melancholy'?

This is a hard book to classify, and while I wouldn't put Beck in the same category as these authors, you could think of fiction like A Confederacy of Dunces, Slaughterhouse 5, or Catch-22 but a little less ambitious.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, through LibraryThing, in exchange for an honest review.

3-1/2 stars

* * * * * *

The Melancholy Strumpet Master

author: Zeb Beck

publisher: Broadly Reviled Books

ISBN: 9798378201969

paperback, 273 pages

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VINYL RESTING PLACE - Olivia Blacke

Image
 Juni Jessup and her two sister, Tansy and Maggie, have gone into business together in their hometown of Cedar River, Texas, opening a combination record store and coffee shop. Vinyl LPs are making a comeback after all, despite critics thinking the medium was dead.  But speaking of 'dead' ... finding a dead body in the supply closet just as they are looking to have a grand opening is not part of the plan.  Juni's life gets more complicated when their uncle, Calvin, already a suspect in the murder, disappears. And the police officer leading the investigation is Juni's EX-boyfriend (who passive-aggressively keeps putting himself back into her life). Convinced that her uncle would never murder anyone, Juni sets out to prove his innocence - which isn't easy since he's making himself look guilty - because Calvin is family and family is EVERYthing to Juni. As readers of my blog know, I'm not a big fan of most cozy mysteries, but the setting caught my eye and my in...
Read more

THE WALLED CITY - Ryan Graudin

Image
  Jin and her sister, Mei Yee, were taken and sold and then sent to the lawless Walled City to serve as prostitutes or slaves to anyone willing to pay. Jin managed to escape her captivity, but not the Walled City and she now lurks about, disguised as a boy and is trying to track down the brothel where her sister is still captive. Jin will work odd delivery jobs to earn a small bit of money and hopefully have a legitimate means of coming in contact with her sister's captors.  This is how she meets up with Dai, a mysterious boy who has somehow managed to avoid running with any of the gangs in the city but he seems to have his own unusual connections, which Jon could desperately use if she has any hope of finding Mei Yee. But Dai has his own desperate needs.  The story is told from the different perspectives of each character and we do bounce around quite a bit as the chapters are generally short. This never bothered me, which is slightly unusual as often I find this techni...
Read more

THE RAVEN THIEF - Gigi Pandian

Image
 With Tempest Raj now a member of the company, Secret Staircase Construction (a company who, as their title suggests, builds mystery-themed, secret rooms inside homes) has finished their first job. Their client now wants to celebrate to kick off her new beginning - new home and new life now that she's divorced from her cheating ex-husband, famous mystery author Corbin Colt. First up, a mock séance to remove any trace of Corbin from the property, led by Tempest's friend, Sanjay.   But during that séance, while all those gathered sat in a dark room holding hands, Corbin's dead body crashes the party, falling across the table in front of everyone. There were eight people in the room, and they were all holding hands, but all the evidence points to one of them being the murderer.  Suspicions point to Ash, Tempest's grandfather, because he was the only one with Corbin's blood on him. Of course, as a doctor, he was also the only one who checked on the body - ...
Read more