Cleveland Anonymous: A Novel

by Keith Gandal

Beset by a severe disability on the day a fire devastates his young life, Sam is miraculously cured twenty years later when his home is destroyed by an earthquake, and setting out in search of his missing foster sister, he encounters a series of fires and a bizarre cast of characters. Original.

Genres: Fiction

305 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2002

Reviews

[Greg Locascio]

Author Keith Gandal uses an actual historic event, a fire on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, to begin Cleveland Anonymous, even though the picture on the cover is from a 1952 fire on the same river.

I attended Northern Illinois University when Gandal was a professor there and attended a seminar where he talked about his novel (I never took any of his classes). Now, at long last, almost 20 years later, I finally read it.

The narrator Sam has his life upended the day of the 1969 fire. His foster sister, Mary Jane, who he was in situ with when the fire occurs, disappears afterwards. Sam is afflicted with a debilitating back disease, which is somehow miraculously cured 20 years later during the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. Liberated at last from disability, Sam leaves his loveless marriage after his house burns down and goes to New York City in search of Mary Jane. Here he meets a quirky cast of characters and discovers he is sexually irresistible and has the mysterious power to diagnose and heal others' ailments.

This part of the novel gets bogged down a bit. There are sexually explicit asides in a mobile group therapy, psychedelic visions, and so much dialogue. The excessive conversation often didn't flow well for me, but there were enough funny moments to keep the plot moving along. There is an absurdist sense of glee throughout this novel, which is its saving grace.

I grew up in Rockford, IL, a poorer, more blue collar city near the Illinois/ Wisconsin border. Rockford residents have a spunky kind of inferiority complex to the suburbs and Chicago. I get the same sensibility about Cleveland from this novel. It's a rust belt gem but has a less than charming reputation. When I was a long-haul truck driver, I stopped in Cleveland many times, so I've seen it's seamier industrial underbelly. I want to return at leisure and go to a Guardians game and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But I'll be sure to not drop a lighted match into the Cuyahoga...

[Gary McDowell]

Former prof of mine is the author. Hilarious book.

[Bret]

Perhaps I'm biased, given an old professor of mine wrote this, but I thought it was hilarious.