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Grendel's Guide to Love and War: A Tale of Rivalry, Romance, and Existential Angst

Grendel's Guide to Love and War: A Tale of Rivalry, Romance, and Existential Angst

Reviewed by: Sheila Dube - Springvale Public Library, Springvale, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: September 18, 2017

Review

Recommend for cream consideration. Tom Grendel holds his life together by providing mowing services and a listening ear to the personal histories of all the geriatric women in the retirement community he lives in. The sudden loss of his mother to a stroke when he was 9, and the active PTSD that makes his veteran father a neglectful one, creates the back drop of Tom's need to provide these services. Tom's carefully constructed routine is shattered when his newly deceased neighbor's nephew Rex begins to have loud, nightly parties. The noise makes his father have an episode and his father leaves. Tom takes it upon himself to solve the problem in order to have his father come back home. As Tom and his best friend Ed try to solve the problem, the pranks between them and Rex escalate to an alarming level. And on top of that, Tom finds himself a little attracted to Rex's unreliable, gothic sister Willow. Only when Tom faces a few truths about his mother's death, and enlists the help of his sister and the wise, geriatric women are they able to take back the neighborhood. Kaplan provides the right amount of chemistry between the quirky first person voice of Tom, the ups and downs of neighborly revenge and the deceptively deeper levels of emotional trauma that permeate his world.

Overall Book Score: excellent