Going Postal

By Stephan Jaramillo

Steve Reeves, the protagonist of Stephan Jarmaillo's first novel, Going Postal, is living proof that a college degree doesn't get you that far anymore. The first and only member of his family to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425157687
• ISBN13: 9780425157688
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

My favorite book

I loved this book so much. i'm a 17 year old girl from ontario, canada. Going postal is the most funniest, touching books of the year. i loved the part when steve and brady were camping and steve had the profound thoughts about the pink stone. i also read Jarmillo's "chocolate jesus" but i didn't think it was as good.

Hilarious from start to finish...and you'll finish it fast.

"Going Postal" was the funniest book I've read since "A Catcher in the Rye" 15 years ago. I don't consider myself an Xer but I think the underlying message in this book, as in "Catcher", is to find reconciliation in what we do with our lives. And if that means fantasizing about blowing a few people away and maintaining a sense of humor which is firmly grounded in reality, it's better than actually going postal. If you want to laugh until it hurts, read this book. I finished it in four and 1/2 hours.

what a great book

Going Postal has what so few books have today, an author who tells a story in such a conversational voice that you forget you are reading and you become immersed in the story. I love this book. If you haven't read it you must!

Best book this 27-year-old college graduate read this year!

"Going Postal" is without a doubt one of the best books of the year--if not the best--and I can't understand why it hasn't been getting more publicity. I've been doing my part, though, and telling my friends and anyone who will listen that they owe it to themselves to check this book out! I loved everything about "Going Postal", so much, in fact, that it's not easy singling out any one part. Although I have to say, (being no stranger to the bar scene myself), that the detailed descriptions of the night out club-hopping with Brady are so well-written they can only come from the voice of experience. The insanity of everyday situations, the meaningless job, the bad break-up, the homicidal revenge fantasies, I've been there, hey, we all have! The dialogue throughout is especially well-done, fresh, full of sly cultural references, but more importantly, very funny and, as is the case with the whole book, very real. I cannot recommend "Going Postal" highly enough, props and thank you to Mr. Jaramillo for one hell of a debut novel, and I'm most definitely watching and waiting for his next one to roll off the presses.

It was suddenly sublime....

Going Postal is a story of a college grad, with a postal worker father, stuck in the dead-end merry-go-around work-cycle. A life far from perfect, but one in which the main character, Steve Reeves, in spite of a titanic-like sub-exisitence never gives into complete despair. Reeves' take on everything would be: Life hands u your jaw, so be it, simply fit the teeth back in and go on, making jokes about toothpaste all along the way. And when epic tour-de-force quasi-stage play novels take on this 'false high-toned greatness and richness', it's oh sooo ever nice to read a story like Going Postal. Writer's gimmick, slacker pointlessness, meandering characters; all charges leveled against this novel. But those are easy surface whip lashes; this is a experienced novel - a daily record. It's one thing to impart one's experiences and to transform them upon another, but Jaramillo goes far beyond that...his book 'becomes' you. I hate to divide Postal into a GenX vs. Baby Boomer tag, as the story can stand alone. But I see a direct line between half the readers rabidly, frantically loving this book and the other half tossing it off as world-owes-me-living whining. The steady drum beat of the plot is underlining the story, with major diversions, which to some are cause for great alarm, but that's part of the charm of this book. Going Postal is real life, it's not nice little neat packages, save that for happily-ever-after fairy tales or bestseller novels. To the Baby Boomer types who see only whining and yagging; wipe away preconceived notions, live thru the character, don't impart your conceptual framework upon the book. Jaramillo's extended descriptions of various concepts and characters almost creates a whole new writer's coinage, call it Jaramilloism if u wish. Going Postal's laser-beams in on what many experience, but never can solidly articulate; wording the minor details to a angelic level. The book is soooo much alive, I simply cannot grasp how this could have been lost on anyone, but then again as Going Postal so vividly befolds, life is not perfect