Synopses & Reviews
"A horrifyingly mature and beautiful debut" (The Independent), Name the Baby is a gut-wrenching monologue that follows an aggrieved, manic twenty-one-year-old on an unforgettable three-day odyssey through the mysteries of life and love.
Published to great critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, Name the Baby is the hilarious, heartbreaking rant of a young man whose girlfriend has just committed suicide in their New York City apartment. Burdened with guilt, sadness, and rage, he can't bear to stay in the apartment and embarks on a wild search for some meaning and solace that takes him through bars and clubs in New York City, then on to New Jersey to hang out with his family, and finally back to the city again. During this journey, he reflects with rousing originality on his own life, failed relationships, music, Shakespeare, dogs, cemeteries, and the ways of the world. His is a a voice you can't ignore and a story you can't forget.
"Slip your harmonica in your ass pocket and buy this soaring, gut-twisting first novel. Our hero's voice is mordant, cruel, and hilariously authentic. You won't forget his new blues, nor his chaotic, big, beautiful heart. Mark Cirino is going to be known as the great, young American writer he already is". -- Alan Warner, author of Morvern Callar
"Name the Baby is an intensely moving novel -- for the beauty of its often violent, always perfectly pitched language, for its observations, for its authenticity, its simplicity, and its bite". -- The Times (London)
"Name the Baby has the rhythm of a Springsteen tune with the poetry of a Dylan lyric". -- The Bookseller
"Cirino pays homage to The Catcher in the Rye, and, as with Salinger's novel, much ofName the Baby's power lies in its narrative voice: colloquial, lyrical, brutal". -- The Independent (London)
Synopsis
After the shocking suicide of his girlfriend, a twenty-one-year-old struggles to figure out the mysteries of life and love. This extraordinarily intense novel follows a young man during a three-day odyssey that begins with a night of self-abuse in New York City. Fueled by whiskey and his own internal demons, he goes to a blues bar where a bouncer assaults and ejects him, and then on to a club where he dances with a beautiful girl he names Goldheart. Burdened with guilt, sadness, and rage, he returns to his family in New Jersey where he is forced to face uncomfortable truths about his relationships with them and his past. During this journey, he reflects with refreshing originality on his own life, the ways of the world, failed relationships, music, Shakespeare, dogs, cemeteries, and psychedelic drugs.
Name the Baby is a deeply moving novel in which the reader gets swept along by the intoxicating rhythm of its language and becomes a confidant of the narrator's most personal thoughts, observations, and confessions. Full of haunting surprises, unexpected warmth, and brutal honesty, it is an outstanding debut from a writer whose remarkably fresh and original voice leaves a lasting impression.