Greg AmesCritiques

My favorite genre is short story collections, and the edgier the better. However, I am not really sure where the author is going with his writing. There are bursts of brilliance such as Men's Room, where the rhythms make me wonder if the author is a musician and other stories that are just uncomfortable to reach. If he wants to write like Fight Story, there have to be certain truths found in the weirdness. Thanks to Sky Publishing for the review copy. I would like to read more of this author's work.

Despite my ongoing attempt to get Goodreads to notice that I read books set in Buffalo and the surrounding area, this one had apparently escaped their algorithmic net, and it wasn't on any of my TBR lists. So when I saw it at the dollar store, I snapped it up, not expecting much.

First off, I'll say that it doesn't deserve to be at the dollar store with all the religious self-help books and knockoffs of bestsellers. It's a good contemporary literary novel. It reminds me of the books from the literary brat pack in the 80s; the theme of a young person returning home to find he's outgrown his old friends is one that never really gets old for me.

The details about Buffalo got a little tedious, although I have to admire the photographic accuracy of them. When he says he and his dad went to a Bob Evans a few miles from the airport, I know which one it is. It probably helps that the book takes place in the years I lived there, so it's exactly like I remember it. When he's remembering the 90s on Elmwood, I can hear a friend telling me how Elmwood in the 2000s wasn't the same and how it used to be, back in the 90s. :-) The oral histories are a lot like that too: I'm not sure they added much other than local color to the story, but they were very real. But what really sold the book to me was the dead-on description of dementia and the nursing home. Greg Ames just NAILED that part. He got it exactly right, down to the smallest detail.

The protagonist is completely believable: a little pretentious, drifting along in a job he doesn't mind but doesn't love, exactly at the age when he can see how he failed to appreciate his family when he had the chance. Because of the first-person POV, he can tell the kind of almost-lies that you tell people when you feel like they *could* be true.

Of course, that's also the source of my biggest quibble with the book. James never gets impatient with his mom (except early on in her dementia), never seems to get angry about the way she's changed, never has any issues with the nursing-home staff. For a guy who's not particularly nice, he's way too nice about all of that. It seems like he's going to have to make a big decision--whether or not to kill his mom--but when the time comes for him to make that decision, the story fizzles out. His various romantic encounters are much the same. Every time it looks like James is going to have a major turning point, he just kind of walks through it. Other people get to make the big decisions and do the big things. While that's in keeping with his character, it doesn't make a strong story.

Basically, the writing is excellent, but the plot is... less so. It could have been a truly amazing first novel, but the meandering plot weakens it. In other words, it's a typical first novel from a really promising writer. :-)

I have to set this one aside for now. I don't know if I'll get back to it. The main character is unlikeable. And the storyline is a little too depressing to read during Christmas time.

If you grew up in Buffalo,lived in Buffalo,moved away from Buffalo..this is a good read! The author is from Buffalo,it is his first novel. Son somes home to Buffalo to visit his dying mother and aging father. Very sad throughout the book due the storyline abt his mother,but there is alot of humor in when it comes to viewing life.Lots of local landmarks mentioned in his visit home. Not only a history ofhis life,his parents but of Buffalo too.

The only thing Positive I can say about this book, is it describes what a depressing, horible place Buffalo NY is. I wanted to care about this book but I just couldn't. You knew how it wouuld end for his mother, and you knew that the main character and narrarator (James) would be as much of a loser at the end of the book as in the begining.
Based on other reviews I am clearly in the minority but this book just didn't work for me.

The jacket copy for BUFFALO LOCKJAW states, "James Fitzroy isn't doing so well." I disagree. I think James is doing damn well under the circumstances. His mother is slowly dying from Alzheimers, and at far too young an age. He's still trying to connect with his emotionally distant father, the absolute personification of that title syndrome. Because Rodney Fitzroy isn't maintaining just that proverbial stiff upper lip in the face of his wife's long slow dying, he's got the lockjaw thing down too.

Protagonist James, at 28 a part of that so-called 'slacker' generation, is perhaps a bit slow to mature like so many of his contemporaries, but at least he did manage to get out of Buffalo (out of the shadow of his over-achieving sister) and find a job. Writing verses and captions in the "Laffs" department of a greeting card company may not be the best of careers. Hell, maybe it's not a career at all, but at least he has a steady job, which is more than most of his toked-up beer-swilling Buffalo buddies can say.

But at the very heart of BUFFALO LOCKJAW is the strong love that James feels for his dying mother, who was a career nurse who loved and believed in her work. It is breaking James's heart to watch her recede into the emptiness of Alzheimers, and in his desperation and love, he studies the possibility of some kind of intervention, reading about assisted suicide and euthanasia.

The odd thing about this book is that despite such a serious and unfunny subject, Ames manages to inject a lot of humor into his first-person narrative. It is, I think, the mark of a very talented writer who can make his reader belly laugh and then nearly weep within the space of a page or two. Greg Ames is that kind of a talent, and he manages to do this repeatedly. So what do you call a book like this? Tragic? Yes. Funny? Yes again. Because this is the tale of a deep-thinking slacker, one with a heart and a soul. I guess I'll just have to call this book beautiful. I will be watching for Greg Ames's next effort. This guy can WRITE!

Das Buch war schön und manchmal auch ein wenig traurig. Ich enpfehle es jedem weiter , der Familientragödien mag :-)

I'm always eager to read novels set in Buffalo, and then really hyper-critical of them after. The narrator, James, is one of those guys in his late 20s with a job that he hates who lives in Brooklyn, and returns to his hometown (Buffalo) to visit his mother who is living in a nursing home with early onset Alzheimer's. His father is in the process of selling the family's home and moving into a smaller apartment, and his sister, the Most Favored Child, is also in town visiting.

The family dynamics were done very well. The characters and their relationships really developed nicely over the course of the book. At first, I was a little hesitant about the mother in a nursing home bit, I felt like I've read this story a lot recently. But this was well-managed and I was soon very committed to this aspect of the plot.

I was more mixed about the Can't Go Home Again threads of the plot - James's ambivalent attempts to reconnect with his Buffalo friends. There were some points that worked, I loved the writing in the passages that showed James aimlessly driving around town trying to recapture the geography of his past. However, there was something about the handling of these friends that I thought fell flat. They never took shape for me as believable characters, they felt too buffoony and their only purpose seemed to be to set up situations which were intended to be humorous but were far too forced. The difference in tone between the family episodes and James's interactions with his friends is jarring and mismatched.

As always, the things that make growing up in Buffalo unique feel too contrived and expository when thrown out there on the page like that. However, I remain faithful that someday I will find the book that manages to succeed in this area.½

James, the book's narrator, is exploring his evolving relationships with his family and friends in the face of personal tragedy- his mother has advanced Alzheimer disease. James' love for his mother is perhaps the most unchanging attribute of his personality. He is changing from a prime example of a slacker in a group of slacker associates to someone who is starting to act like a grown-up- though maybe not so much as to call him a grown-up to his face! This is very moving, often sad, but well written tale. The book is a special treat for its Buffalo readers. It has authentic insight into life in Buffalo with all its warts.

As a Buffalonian, I had a sudden "a-ha" experience at the midpoint of this first novel - an epiphany that profoundly changed my relationship to the book, to the story. Thus, my rating may be generous, may be biased. Hard for me to know. I do know that I enjoyed the writing immensely. I also always enjoy books that have a connection to Buffalo. This book provides great insight into the city and into the people that make this city what it is. Despite all the gallows humor and quirkiness contained within, the story proves quite serious. The final act, the act of "moving a muscle," is small, but it is a first step forward in the narrator's long journey toward understanding his history, his family, and his evolving self. This book possesses an energy that is real - an energy that is reflective of the city in which the story is set. For all Buffalonians, I recommend this book highly. In fact, I recommend it highly to all. Greg Ames thanks many within the last couple pages of the book. Greg, thanks for bringing this story to life. It is a great start to your novel writing days.

Greg Ames has written a searing, all to real novel about watching someone you love slip into dementia. When James Fitzroy returns to his hometown of Buffalo at Thanksgiving, he finds himself tormented by his mother’s mental and physical decline from Alzheimer’s Disease. He wonders why his mother - a nurse who everyone loved and a woman whose nursing text is still being used to educate new nurses - should have to suffer this indignity, while James wastes his life drinking too much, having meaningless sex and working in a dead end job as a writer of taglines for greeting cards. He also worries about his father who is aging and alone now.

It is this misdirected sense of responsibility that compels James to consider ending his mother’s life. He agonizes over how he would do it, or if such an act is even justified.

I sit beside her trying to imagine what she thinks and feels. If it’s true that she experiences no physical pain, and that mentally she is no more cognizant of her condition than a baby is - the baby doesn’t recognize the helplessness of her life because she has nothing to compare it to - then this is my problem and not hers. But if she is suffering with the knowledge of loss, if she recognizes the absence of dignity, which I suspect is the case, then her shame and despair must consume her. And she has nothing but time, the regulated ticking of minutes on a clock, to remind her of that. - from Buffalo Lockjaw, page 117 -

James Fitzroy is not a wholly likable character - he can be crude and he drinks too much, he seems to have no aspirations to raise his life to a higher level - and yet, I found myself empathizing with him and appreciating his deep love and loyalty to his mother. In one scene, he carefully flosses his mother’s teeth, believing she would be ashamed by her poor dental hygiene. James shows compassion even toward other residents at the care home - holding their hands, or speaking to them with empathy. One gets the feeling that here is a young man completely misunderstood for most of his life, and trying now to rectify this.

Interspersed throughout the narrative are clips of other characters talking about Buffalo and the people who live there - at first I wasn’t sure what to make of these interuptions in the novel. But the reader ultimately understands that James was an “urban ethnologist” and these snippets of narrative come from his interview tapes. They lend a surreal touch to the book and offer a glimpse at the personal stories of others living in James’ hometown, but aside from this they seemed a distraction from the real purpose of the novel.

Ames writes with black humor and irony as he explores the controversial subject of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. He does not offer an answer as to whether euthansia is morally right or wrong, but instead opens up a fertile ground for discussion. Buffalo Lockjaw would make a great book club read for this reason. Thematically the novel is about aging, loss, love and the parent/child relationship through time.

Buffalo Lockjaw is a laudable debut and one which captivated me from the beginning because of its authenticity. I not only work with patients suffering dementia in my profession of Physical Therapy, but my father also suffers from progressive dementia because of small vessel disease. Greg Ames has skillfully captured the immense sadness and utter hopelessness of watching a loved one be robbed of their intellect, personality, and dignity because of a disease like Alzheimers.

Recommended with a caution - Ames writes with direct, sometimes unnerving prose which may disturb some readers.