Breakfast With The Ones You Love by Eliot Fintushel
01/07/2007 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub Bantam Spectra. 275 page enlarged paperback. Price: $12.00 (US), $15.00 (CAN). ISBN: 978-0-553-38405-5. Buy Breakfast With The Ones You Love in the USA - or Buy Breakfast With The Ones You Love in the UK  check out websites: www.bantamdell.com
This is an odd book which I feel loses the plot half-way. Author Eliot Fintushel's background lies with short stories and this looks like his first novel-length.
The first half is certainly interesting. Hiding out in the Jewish section of New York, goth or punk-looking and occasional waitress Lea Tillim can kill with a thought. She is befriended by Jack Konar aka The Yid, after she rescues him from an apparent mugging. He's using hashish deals to help fund a rocket he is building, sees Lea as a member of the team and enlists her to help. From such does the start of romances begin except this one becomes still-born after Konar is kidnapped after a boxing match which Lea was supposed to fix and got the wrong man.
From there, the story goes askew as Konar's colleagues come out of the woodwork to help rescue and send him on his way.
Had Fintushel played it straight all the way through leaving it to the reader to decide whether Konar was delusional or not this might have been a better novel. In the end, I felt he was getting bored or needed something to spice the story's SF elements up. Considering this story was also written in the first person through Lea's eyes we don't see the whole story, especially in the last half of the book.
This isn't to say the first half isn't interesting. This part is especially good with some nice character pieces. Fintushel should have kept to this more than go as experimental as he did towards the end. Looking at the awards he has for his short stories, his fans are probably going to be more in tune with this book than those coming to his material fresh. Once he settles down into the long form, confidence will show which way he wants to write.
GF Willmetts |
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