Saying Uncle opens with a quote from Mary Wollstonecraft that reads as so: "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happinesss, the good he seeks." This quote will not manifest itself in Saying Uncle in the opening pages, and you may forget the quote existed by the time the novel is closed on page 142, but the truth is this quote, while powerful on its own, takes on an eternal new meaning with the world Greg F. Gifune has created in his short novel from December Girl Press.
     We're witnesses to this world, a small working class town in New England, through the persona of Andy DeMarco, interspersingly from him as a child growing up to an adult having come back to town to identify the body of his uncle. As a child Andy was passionate, naive, and surrounded by people who loved him, including his single mother and his Uncle Paulie, who had become a father figure in his family, a man police reports may signal as shady but a man never afraid to protect and provide for those he loved.
     But now Uncle is dead, the victim of a gunshot to the back of the head, and Andy is the only one who will identify him. As he returns to Warden for this purpose, the falling snowstorm brings with it more than just cold. It brings memories left behind, resolutions left ignored, and lost friends never to be fully recovered. It brings a slow understanding of all that has transpired, both the regrets and the blessings.
     Greg F. Gifune is quite easily one of the most underrated authors in the small press, and Saying Uncle is a prime example. From the way he creates characters to be wholly familiar and unique at the same time, to the way he injects an easy flow into his prose, to the way he can make you forget the world around you and adopt a new one entirely, Greg is an author of his own class, of his own level, who, quite simply, deserves to be read.
     Saying Uncle is a shorter novel, 142 pages, but carries with it the weight of an epic. Whether or not you're familiar with Greg F. Gifune; whether or not this is in your favored genre; whether or not you've got enough good books waiting to be read to add another to the list: Saying Uncle is easily one of the best novels you'll read this year, and one you won't soon forget thereafter.

                :: Jon Hodges ::


     Have you read this title? Rate it for other customers here.