Synopses & Reviews
Author of the internationally acclaimed Lord of the Barnyard, Tristan Egolf has established himself as one of the most audacious and inventive young writers in America, a lean and mean fabulist of the first degree (Kirkus Reviews). With Skirt and the Fiddle, Egolf has given us a novel that is equal parts headlong plunge into the joys and absurdity of infatuation and a love song to the maddening folly of friendship. Charlie Evans is a brilliant violinist who, embittered by a truly horrendous gig, has kissed the fiddle and the entire straight world good-bye. He lives in a flophouse among misfits like Armless Rob, Emmylou Mattressback, and Tinsel Greetz, an ersatz anarchist and 200-proof charlatan. Mutually antagonistic and joined at the shot glass, Tinsel and Charlie nevertheless make a great team, and when they get a highly illegal, extremely lucrative gig killing rats in the sewers, they are a deadly, unstoppable force. The morning after dissipating their hard-earned money, the boys wake up in a strange (five-star ) hotel room with the worst hangovers of their lives. And when Charlie meets the bewitching Louise, who's offered them shelter--well, then he's in trouble of a whole new sort. Skirt and the Fiddle is an exuberant novel that confirms Tristan Egolf as a writer eager to take chances, totally unafraid and allergic to conventions (The Cleveland Plain Dealer)