cover image The Junk-Drawer Corner-Store Front-Porch Blues

The Junk-Drawer Corner-Store Front-Porch Blues

John R. Powers. Dutton Books, $19 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-525-93405-9

In this quip-packed novel from the author of Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? , narrator Donald Cooper, a divorced father and gag writer in L.A., reassesses his life and finally comes of age. Donald is gloomy: the results of his lung biopsy are pending, his girlfriend has just stormed out of the apartment, it's his 45th birthday and no well-wishers have called--not even his elderly mother back in Chicago. Donald himself has avoided his hometown since his younger brother's death 25 years ago. But when he learns that his mother has been hospitalized after a fall, he rushes to her bedside. She persuades him to retrieve some items from the house where he grew up, and returning there allows him to begin a protracted eulogy to Danny, who died at 18. In no particular order, he recalls baseball games, family dinners, holidays and dating, telling how Danny, his closest friend, shrugged off competition though he was a natural at sports and easily won girls over with his mature sensitivity. Powers based this novel on a one-man show, Scissors, Paper, Rock , in which he toured the country in 1989; reading it is like watching a series of home movies. (Feb.)