G.J. Prager is a name to watch. THE LESSON PLAN may be his first novel but it is so successfully written that it suggests we have a new burgeoning talent among us! On the surface this novel seems to be a first person narrated story shared by a frustrated Robert Klayman who is unemployed, living from paycheck to paycheck by serving as a substitute teacher in Santa Monica, California to pay the rent in a shambles of an... mehr anzeigen
G.J. Prager is a name to watch. THE LESSON PLAN may be his first novel but it is so successfully written that it suggests we have a new burgeoning talent among us! On the surface this novel seems to be a first person narrated story shared by a frustrated Robert Klayman who is unemployed, living from paycheck to paycheck by serving as a substitute teacher in Santa Monica, California to pay the rent in a shambles of an apartment he shares with his faithful cohort dog Homer, unattached to a significant other and ever obsessed with physical attractions/encounters, whose dream it is to become a Private Investigator. But there is so much more.
At story's beginning Klayman is working an assignment for one detective Cal Keller - following a blonde woman who Klayman succeeds in tracing only to be conked out when he discovers her dead, bloody body. Cal dismisses Klayman for a botched case forcing Klayman to continue his substitute of a life as an oncall teacher replacement. But Klayman's school jobs happen to introduce him to a fellow substitute teacher Sheila with whom he not only finally relates but also beds, only to be asked by the woman to drive to Arizona to deliver a package to her son who has been taken from her by her ex-husband. This leads Klayman into a quagmire of new problems - drugs, a shooting, being chased by police - until he escapes back to Santa Monica and the presumed boring quiet of his substitute life only to have eyes for a voluptuous student Maria who he involves in his pursuing a discovery that there is a drug ring active in the school system. It is this back and forth slamming from the boring life of a substitute teacher enhanced or compounded with an almost inadvertent entry in the role of a PI that drives this little novel home.
Yes, this is a solid and well constructed story that once started makes the reader stay with it until the end (even an all-nighter in this reader's case!). But what the too brief synopsis does not reveal is a writer who happens to be one of the best to describe the Southern California life - weather, traffic on the freeway, loose livers, drugs and other digressions, and the apparent inability to follow a dream successfully. In the author's words: 'Life can play clever tricks on us mortals who wait desperately for dreams to come true, realizing only too late that it's an end game and much too short at that. Reaching middle age without accumulating a formidable bank account can leave a man bitter and emasculated, ruminating on every lost opportunity that ever came his way. Nothing I ever did made me money; lady luck's a discriminating bitch that won't invite just anyone up to her room.' And in addition to being a painter of landscape and figurative canvases as well as anyone writing today he maintains an extraordinarily fine-tuned sense of humor, no matter how desperate a situation he is describing. Readers will attach themselves to this social malaprop and see the madness of the world through his distorted vision, identifying with those contemporary frustrations and maladjustments he somehow survives, and stand and root for him all the way: there is a dollop of Robert Klayman in each of us - at least in Southern California. Think of his circle: Christopher Isherwood, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Chandler, Matt Groening, Evelyn Waugh - and add a comedy vein of gold. Welcome G.J.Prager! Grady Harp, April 11
