Rocket Man (Paperback)

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Hazelgrove holds a mirror to us, and the reflection isnt all that pretty!, February 11, 2009

By Grady

William Elliott Hazelgroves ROCKET MAN is a brilliant piece of writing, a work that meticulously dissects contemporary life in America with such a keen eye that the author is able to catch at least passing glances at us all. Hazelgrove is a facile, witty, enormously gifted wordsmith, a writer able to find the extraordinary in even the most mundane, ordinary people and places and build a story that, while following a large cast of disparate characters and branches of storylines, manages to pull all the pieces together into one all-encompassing view of a single man and his life changes. This novel of life in the suburbs rings true on every page, takes no prisoners, and yet for this reader fails to encourage us to identify with the goodness in anyone! Dale Hammer is a writer of successful books - ten dry years ago! His struggle to restore his place in the literary world is fraught with a move into a larger house in the suburbs, a move he cannot afford, and to cope with his lawyer wife who makes taking care of household chores and raising children seem like insurmountable tasks. Little things happen: he is accused by irate neighbors of cutting down the tacky sign that marks his sterile subdivision, his errant father moves in with him (broke and between many wives, still under the impression that he is the catch of the year), and must deal with a community that dumps the role of Rocket Man (organizer for the Scout troop annual show) in his unwilling lap. His income, during this lapse/block in creative writing, comes from a tacky apartment building he owns in which dwell problem renters. His family descends on him and he must cope with the circus that results. Dale bumps headfirst into his life and the conditions that make it almost inoperable and in the process he finds himself and puts at least a temporary turnabout on continuing the marks of influence from his own father that threaten to alter the future of his own son. It is OK to step outside the box of the American Dream! Reading ROCKET MAN is entertaining, full of chuckles, and flows with beautifully constructed prose from page one to the end. Probably the joke is on us: how can we enjoy a novel that paints such a dreary picture of where we have come in our current society? But it is difficult to care about any of these odd folks. Maybe what we see is really a mirror...Grady Harp, October