Days of Grace

By Mark Falkin

DAYS OF GRACE tells the story of Ian Johns, a bleary and depressed thirty-one-year-old "professional student," who, in the throes of an early-life crisis brought on by his mother's untimely death from cancer, quits law school after surviving the rigors of its proverbially arduous first year to become an itinerant without a plan. With a voice and sensibility that can be likened to Lethem, Sedaris, Coupland and Kerouac, the book is unabashedly picaresque and Neo-Beat, written in a roman clef and journalistic style which has been described as "modified stream-of-consciousness." It is at times dark and bittersweet but is relentlessly tinged with bright-sharp edges of humor. As we go forward with Ian on his travels and go back into the near-past to sit at his mother's deathbed in his childhood home, viewing the world through his admittedly cracked prism, we come away having learned something universal about ourselves, Y2K America and maybe even mortality itself.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1411670795
• ISBN13: 9781411670792
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Length: 520 Pages
• Weight: 1.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

POD-dy Mouth Review and Needle Award Nomination

Days of Grace Nominated for National Literary Award February 22, 2006 "Girl," the writer/reviewer at POD-dy Mouth, a bookish blog profiled in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, LA Times and Publishers Lunch, has nominated Austin writer Mark Falkin for a Needle Award in the literary category for his novel "Days of Grace." His book is on the short list of 5 nominees out of 1,400 books submitted in 2005. The winner will be determined by the handful of judges culled from major literary agencies and publishers. Monday, January 09, 2006 DAYS OF GRACE by Mark Falkin (Lulu) I wish I could say I found this book on my own--and give myself a little [sic] on the back--but it was a submission. What caught my eye was a reference to the writing style of Jonathan Lethem--one of my favorites*--who has a distinct story-telling style that usually leaves you with an indelible smile on your face. So I read DAYS OF GRACE. And I'm still smiling. Ian Johns, our thirty-one-year-old protagonist, takes us on a humor-filled ride (roman a clef? sure) of finding himself--via a road journey--after the untimely death of his mother. Ian is devoid of a plan but full of voice: It's fair to say that I am conducting a series of anthropological experiments of sorts. However, the control group is me and in the end it is me who is also the lab rat. This is literature at its best, bringing you the ins and outs of Ian's life through delightful exposition, making you pause repeatedly and think, "What a great sentence!" The writing style is delightful, both light and funny and at times dark and besetting. Falkin could easily be likened to the aforementioned Lethem or to Augusten Burroughs or even J.D. Salinger. It's a tough call, but maybe you should just judge for yourself: Awakened by noises I couldn't at first readily identify and in a room I only vaguely remember bedding down in (and a room I had never really spent any appreciable time in because it was added on when I was in college), I lay staring at the ceiling's spackle paint patterns, simultaneously discomfited and heartened by the musty smell of familial dirty laundry. Something recognizable in the smell, the stink that rose above the heap. It was the penultimate smell of home, the ultimate being a dinner dish only your family's gastronomical alchemy can conjure, of the bodies of the people from whom I come and from whom I gather strength. The smell of the pack. Primal smell. With a hint of bleach and detergent held in packages expressing urgent freshness rolling down from the shelf. Bottom line? This book is not only a bona fide page-turner, it's downright cool. This novel has everything going for it--even a dynamite cover.... http://girlondemand.blogspot.com/