A Soul in the Wind (Excerpts from the Book of Life).

A Soul in the Wind (Excerpts from the Book of Life)

Richard Finegold

Llumina Press

PO Box 772246, Coral Springs, FL 33077-2246

ISBN 9781595267504, $18.95, 1-866-229-9244, www.llumina.com

"A Soul in the Wind (Excerpts from the Book of Life)" is an engaging and often hilarious novel that will make you laugh out loud, cheer for the main character, and yet feel he gets what he deserves in the end.

Gideon Fruitman's story is one of growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, going to college, marrying and raising a family. He is a Jewish man, continually trying to get ahead with women, in school, in his job, and always finding something to frustrate him along the way. The novel is in some ways every heterosexual male's story, and specifically that of the baby boomer generation, as Gideon takes the reader on his journey through his time period, the events and music of his generation, and specifically through his series of attempts for success, disappointments, guilt, and sense that the fates have it in for him. After all, as Gideon points out, when John F. Kennedy had such a tragic fate, why should he expect anything better?

Gideon's quest to understand the opposite sex made me laugh out loud at times, especially when as a boy his mother loses the top of her bathing suit, resulting in his puking at the sight. Female readers might find Gideon a bit annoying, just as his wife does when he asks her on their wedding night about female plumbing. Male readers, however, who enjoy novels such as Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint" and John Updike's "Rabbit" series, will welcome this novel with its likeable male character who unfortunately lets his sex drive interfere with his reason.

One cheers for Gideon throughout the novel, hoping he will have the sexual experience he wants and that his hard work in school will pay off, and yet his story is one of real-life. While his Jewish guilt is a bit much--he feels a sense of responsibility when his cousin dies in a car accident at the exact time he smokes his first cigarette--Gideon's view of fate is one to which many readers will relate. "A Soul in the Wind" has no plot other than to follow Gideon through life as he tries to succeed, but it is an enjoyable Odyssey through his life. The irony of the last fifteen pages may catch the reader by surprise, and yet the ending is appropriate and satisfying. One wonders how much of Gideon's story is based on the author, Richard Finegold's life since the information about the author on the cover resembles Gideon's background, but unlike Gideon who dreams of writing a great novel, with "A Soul in the Wind," Richard Finegold has succeeded.