Reservations Recommended
Publisher Description
Memoirist Peter Leroy constructs a plausible adult life for his grade school chum Matthew Barber, now living in Boston, where he is vice-president of a toy company by day, but becomes Bertram W. Beath, restaurant reviewer, when the sun goes down.
Reservations Recommended is a satire of the critical mind; a dark commentary on contemporary culture; a story of midlife crisis; a morality play; and a book that matches bleakness against humor, seasoned throughout with B. W. Beath’s hilariously acid reviews. We watch as Matthew Barber descends from a self-protective superiority into a species of madness, and into the dark night of the soul.
“A brilliant satire.”
LA Life
“Scary.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Shrewd, adroit, and spirited.”
Donna Seaman, Booklist
“A moving urban fable.”
Roger Harris, Newark Star Ledger
“A merciless sendup of contemporary American pretensions.’
Janice Harayda, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Wonderfully readable . . . touching and intelligent.”
Richard Gehr, The Village Voice
“Hilariously on the mark, . . . witty enough to steal.”
Robert Nadeau, The Boston Phoenix
“A psychosexual ‘tour de farce.’”
Forrest Rogers, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
“Classy and funny.”
Edna Stumpf, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“I recommend this novel without reservations.”
Los Angeles Times
“Humorous, pathetic, incisive, and, well, accurate.”
John Sigwald, Plainview Daily Herald (Texas)
“Divertida, trascendente y hermosa.”
Robert Saladrigas, La Vanguardia (Barcelona)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With the protagonist of this novel, 43-year-old Matthew Barber, a recently divorced toy company executive who's also an undercover restaurant critic, Kraft examines a more constricted world than he did in the effervescent Herb 'n' Lorna. Matthew haunts the dining establishments of Boston--often in the company of girlfriend Belinda--and, as B. W. Beath, writes sardonic reviews for a trendy local paper. Although he's successful in both lines of work and enjoys uninhibited, frequent sex with Belinda, the failure of his marriage (and a childhood as a fat boy) have left Matthew with serious self-doubts. In chapters organized around restaurant visits and capped by reviews, Kraft charts the collapse of Matthew's habitual timidity (kept in place with assorted macho fantasies) under the louder and louder blandishments of his alter ego B.W. Kraft's observant eye, his sure approach to sex, his wit--Matthew deplores what he calls his adequacy complex--are here, but the inventiveness that lifted his earlier work out of the ordinary isn't. Heed the title.
