Professor John MacDonald is the kind of protagonist, or shall I say narrator (he being both), whom certain older male readers seem to like to model themselves after. He is a scream to read about, being quite recognizable. Truly. Hasn’t every woman run across at least one man as surly as MacDonald? And why is it that, for some odd reason, a portion of human males get it into their heads that this is the kind of prickly old grouch they would like to age into. (Reminds me of a senior citizen who stood in the center of a busy street in my home town waving his cane angrily at traffic.)
MacDonald is not as old as all that yet, but he is old enough to reminisce and feel bitter about being retired. The author, Matthew Fries, not only writes effortless prose–the kind that just pulls the reader along–but he climbs adroitly inside his protagonist’s head. Here is the true curmudgeon, in MacDonald, who seemingly got that way from being steeped too long in academia, Scotch, male menopause, and the frustrations faced by so many men of loving and wanting women who are, simply because they are the other sex, too infuriating to be lived with save for the fact that they hypnotize men and conquer their hearts.
I had to laugh at the abundance of salty truisms in what turns out to be a confessed love story. The insinuation of fraud that permeates the academic setting is refreshing. For instance, MacDonald, upon retiring, has moved from his sunny office to ” a dark windowless cell with another retired professor. He was a tonsured old man with glasses and a slight accent, of what origin I was never able to figure and I never bothered to ask — mostly because I felt that he wanted me to. I could tell that he wanted me to ask him: ‘So that accent? Where in God’s name did you pick that one up?’ “
Fries offers a touching and immensely readable exploration of love and of a man who, through reminiscence, awakens to what he has truly felt in life and can no longer hide. I recommend this novella as a refreshingly offbeat love story and brilliant character study penned by a very talented author. For the moment, it is available exclusively via Amazon Kindle.
