Making nice

Matt Sumell

"In Matt Sumell's blazing, heartbreaking first book, our rage-filled hero Alby is flailing wildly against the world around him--he punches his sister (she deserved it), "unprotectos" broads (they deserved it and liked it), gets drunk and picks fights (all deserved), defends defenseless creatures both large and small and spews insults at children, slow drivers, lunch ladies, and every single surviving member of his family. It seems he is the angriest young man in the history of angry young men, and in each of these stories, we watch him run at life with a breakneck speed. But after the loss of his mother to a long battle with cancer, swirling at the center of Alby's fury is a grief so big, so life-shatteringly profound, it might swallow him whole. As Alby drinks, screws, and jokes his way through his pain--from his childhood home on Long Island to a houseboat in a California and many...