A Rough Way to Go

March 25, 2024
A financier turned surfer investigates the mysterious drowning of a hotshot investor, in Garonzik’s cutting yet thin debut noir. Former New York City financial analyst Peter Greene has moved with his wife, Lauren, and three-year-old son, Luke, to a sleepy beach town a few hours outside the city, where he regularly delays his search for employment by catching waves with his buddy, Frank. One day, the body of Robert Townsend, who made a name for himself at the shady Manhattan private equity firm GDR, washes ashore on the beach Peter and Frank frequent. The police rule it an accidental drowning, but Peter’s not so sure. Sensing that his financial connections might qualify him to find answers about Robert’s death—and that doing so could provide his life with some much needed direction—Peter sets out to uncover Robert’s many secrets. Though Peter’s voice is well-developed, Garonzik stumbles when drawing the supporting players: Peter’s tense relationship with the nameless mothers at Luke’s nursery school is clunkily satirical, and Lauren and Frank feel mostly like two-dimensional foils. A late-stage plot turn surfaces some interesting ideas about contemporary fatherhood, but by the time it arrives, the book’s waters have been too choppy for too long. In the end, this doesn’t live up to its aspirations. Agent: Emma Parry, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.

March 8, 2024
Peter Greene lost his finance job just as his wife, Lauren, finished her maternity leave after having their first child, Luke. She has a high-powered, well-paying job, so the couple agree that Peter will be Luke's caregiver until he finds a new job. But days turn into weeks and months, and Peter still has no prospects, so the couple agrees to move to a small town that's a better place to raise kids. Peter quickly becomes depressed, not feeling he fits in anywhere. Then one day, he runs into Robert Townsend, a former colleague. Shockingly, two days later, Townsend's body and his surfboard wash up on the beach. Peter thinks something is fishy about the death; Townsend was an experienced surfer, plus the timing and logistics seem suspicious. Peter decides to investigate, no matter that the death was ruled accidental. After all, it gives Peter a purpose in his dreary, useless life. Though it's difficult not to become impatient with Peter's bumbling, ill-advised, paranoiac, increasingly dangerous investigation, this dark, disturbing book with an often irritating hero has a twist-filled plot and shock ending make it a gripping must-read.

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April 15, 2024
A murder victim prompts a stay-at-home dad to play gumshoe in this darkly comic yarn. Peter Greene, the narrator of Garonzik's debut novel, is disheartened. A recent layoff from his finance job has left him with little to do but ferry his 3-year-old son, Luke, to appointments and run an endless-seeming series of errands for his wife, Lauren. At Lauren's prompting, they've left city life for a coastal town whose sole virtue is the opportunity to indulge his love of surfing. On the beach he meets Robert Townsend, a former colleague, who turns up dead on the sand a week later. With few places to apply his analytical skill and feeling emasculated by his employment status, he begins following leads. What kinds of nefarious deeds was his old firm up to, what brought Robert to that wind-wracked beach, and why are so many people trying to keep him from asking questions? Garonzik strives to make Pete into the kind of sad-sack dad who's populated novels by Sam Lipsyte, Gary Shteyngart, and Teddy Wayne, capturing the adult male put upon by daily responsibilities; a request from Lauren to pick up milk prompts a catastrophic overreaction: "Chernobyl. All is lost. Game over." And he sees the comic absurdities of parenting a toddler, a feeling intensified by Pete's taking Luke to grown-up locales like bars and police stations. In time, Pete learns that Robert's fate is simpler and sadder than his earnest dot-connecting effort suggests, but by that point Garonzik has still struggled to establish a voice for the novel, which sits awkwardly between detective story and man-child bildungsroman. Pete's complaints about Lauren are meant to comically expose a certain narcissism, but she rarely rises above a hectoring harridan. Plotlines about the finance world slow the pace, and the mood of self-deprecation tends to devolve into general sourness. An ambitious if awkward attempt at genre hopping.

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