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Two Guys from Verona: A Novel of Suburbia
Will and Joel are two forty-three-year-olds in a New Jersey suburb on the verge of the millennium. Will is a married, middle-class soul in torment; Joel is a mad closet genius who sees the world as nobody else does. Will pities Joel; Joel pities Will. Then their twenty-fifth high school reunion changes everything.
Two Guys from Verona is a mystery, but not in the conventional sense. Against the backdrop of an unraveling marriage, of romance old and new, and of a community losing its center, Will and Joel plumb the enigmas of sex, love, friendship, and time itself. As the world moves into the inconceivable realm of the 2000s, each man's life takes a turn into a world he never could have imagined.
Two Guys from Verona is a mystery, but not in the conventional sense. Against the backdrop of an unraveling marriage, of romance old and new, and of a community losing its center, Will and Joel plumb the enigmas of sex, love, friendship, and time itself. As the world moves into the inconceivable realm of the 2000s, each man's life takes a turn into a world he never could have imagined.
- GenresFiction
341 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1998
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216 people want to read
About the author
James Kaplan
40 books92 followersJames Kaplan has been writing noted biography, journalism, and fiction for more than four decades. The author of Frank: The Voice and Sinatra: The Chairman, the definitive two-volume biography of Frank Sinatra, he has written more than one hundred major profiles of figures ranging from Miles Davis to Meryl Streep, from Arthur Miller to Larry David.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 8, 2009
Kaplan's story revolves around two high school friends whose lives enter a period of tremendous flux and introspection after they attend their 25th reunion. Joel, a seemingly down-and-out sub-shop employee, learns to let go of his own ubiquitously haunting past. His best friend Will, a "successful" business man, learns to stop living for an uncertain future and to embrace the past, which he has tucked away and made every effort to forget.
The main characters are full and well-rounded, however Kaplan's book feels incomplete to me. He does an excellent job showing how people try to insulate themselves in the protective shell of suburbia, but he also introduces a lot of peripheral characters that go absolutely nowhere.
The main characters are full and well-rounded, however Kaplan's book feels incomplete to me. He does an excellent job showing how people try to insulate themselves in the protective shell of suburbia, but he also introduces a lot of peripheral characters that go absolutely nowhere.
May 30, 2020
I read this book in 2000 and forgot about it for 20 years until I found it in my loft earlier this year. When I started reading again I realised I could remember absolutely nothing about it – other than the girl eating M&Ms, and Mario’s socks that made me cringe then and did exactly the same now.
Will and Joel have been friends since primary school (or elementary school; this is Verona, a township in New Jersey) and at the end of the millennium, are coming up to their 25th high school reunion. Kaplan draws us a picture firstly of Joel and Will, Jewish boys who have never moved away from where they were brought up, and then sets them in the stultifying suburban environment that has defined them, and everyone they associate with. Joel seems to have done nothing with his life; he lives with his widowed, chain-smoking mother in a dated house full of sad memories of his dead father and dead brother, wearing ancient clothes bought by his mother, working in a sandwich shop and doing nothing (apart from living in the past) except writing poetry and fantasy tales and driving around Verona in his Impala with Will.
Will, meanwhile, has what most guys had aimed for; a lawyer wife, two children, a directorship of the family business and the possibility of making a killing on the stock market. The story starts with one event – the high school reunion – and culminates in another – a Millennium Eve party; significant not only because of the new century, but because it marks a complete turning on its head of the status quo.
Joel at first seems stuck, whilst Will has it all going on. Day after day in a sandwich shop, drawn to a girl young enough to be your daughter that feels not quite creepy but not at all right, and no ambition. But look below the surface. The chapters concerning Joel are written in the present tense whilst Will’s parts are in the past, which offers a clue. Underneath Will’s façade is a miserable marriage with a cranky wife, out of control children, a company he can’t manage and an immature schoolboy obsession with objectifying every female as a sex object. I became more and more annoyed with Will as I read on. I didn’t much care for his wife Gail either but I felt sorry for her; even more so when a better alternative to Will was a short, stocky and smug estate agent named Mario with a moustache 20 years out of date to go with his semi transparent silk socks.
The high school reunion introduces us to their contemporaries; a bunch of smug and nasty unlikeable characters but who give plenty of opportunity for comedy when we meet them further on in the book. Barry Bohrer (lived up to his surname) played tennis with Will, and gets a pasting every single week. Will is just the whipping boy for the appalling Gary and Norm to bolster their image; they are too atrocious to have anything else to recommend them. Joel makes more poignant discoveries and receives more revelations than most blokes can cope with. The final scenes are funny in a Michael Douglas Falling Down sort of way. Both guys find themselves having to start over, being completely gobsmacked at what has happened to them over the course of a year.
Not a lot of action – it’s a novel of suburbia after all – but hugely entertaining, humorous and touching all at the same time.
Will and Joel have been friends since primary school (or elementary school; this is Verona, a township in New Jersey) and at the end of the millennium, are coming up to their 25th high school reunion. Kaplan draws us a picture firstly of Joel and Will, Jewish boys who have never moved away from where they were brought up, and then sets them in the stultifying suburban environment that has defined them, and everyone they associate with. Joel seems to have done nothing with his life; he lives with his widowed, chain-smoking mother in a dated house full of sad memories of his dead father and dead brother, wearing ancient clothes bought by his mother, working in a sandwich shop and doing nothing (apart from living in the past) except writing poetry and fantasy tales and driving around Verona in his Impala with Will.
Will, meanwhile, has what most guys had aimed for; a lawyer wife, two children, a directorship of the family business and the possibility of making a killing on the stock market. The story starts with one event – the high school reunion – and culminates in another – a Millennium Eve party; significant not only because of the new century, but because it marks a complete turning on its head of the status quo.
Joel at first seems stuck, whilst Will has it all going on. Day after day in a sandwich shop, drawn to a girl young enough to be your daughter that feels not quite creepy but not at all right, and no ambition. But look below the surface. The chapters concerning Joel are written in the present tense whilst Will’s parts are in the past, which offers a clue. Underneath Will’s façade is a miserable marriage with a cranky wife, out of control children, a company he can’t manage and an immature schoolboy obsession with objectifying every female as a sex object. I became more and more annoyed with Will as I read on. I didn’t much care for his wife Gail either but I felt sorry for her; even more so when a better alternative to Will was a short, stocky and smug estate agent named Mario with a moustache 20 years out of date to go with his semi transparent silk socks.
The high school reunion introduces us to their contemporaries; a bunch of smug and nasty unlikeable characters but who give plenty of opportunity for comedy when we meet them further on in the book. Barry Bohrer (lived up to his surname) played tennis with Will, and gets a pasting every single week. Will is just the whipping boy for the appalling Gary and Norm to bolster their image; they are too atrocious to have anything else to recommend them. Joel makes more poignant discoveries and receives more revelations than most blokes can cope with. The final scenes are funny in a Michael Douglas Falling Down sort of way. Both guys find themselves having to start over, being completely gobsmacked at what has happened to them over the course of a year.
Not a lot of action – it’s a novel of suburbia after all – but hugely entertaining, humorous and touching all at the same time.
May 12, 2023
I had minimal interest in these characters and found the plot slow and unimaginative.
November 9, 2008
I like to read take-offs of Shakespeare plays, so I picked up this novel from the public library for 50 cents a couple of years ago thinking it might be a modern version of Two Gentlemen of Verona. Wrong! There were no parallels between the two stories that I could pick up except for a couple of names; the title, was probably used as a clue that this love story was about two modern-day suburbanites--rather than upper class, elite men,looking for love or sex while struggling to balance the needs of living. I couldn't bring myself to care much about the main characters, Joel and Will, but came to enjoy reading about them after a few chapters. Though I liked the end because it brought a form of justice to each one, it was a bit too pat to be realistic.
December 4, 2023
My late Grandma Lil gave me this book some twenty years ago and said it might make a good movie. I don't know if I read it at the time but I picked it up this year from my bookshelf and now I am baffled as to what my sweet Grandma saw in it.
March 22, 2008
I love novels set in the suburbs. I've read this one several times in the past few years and it never disappoints. Mr. Kaplan captures the moodiness of the planned community as well as the gerbil wheel memories of those living in them...with a twist. Very entertaining.
June 17, 2007
"Great endpapers--somewhat less great novel"
own-to-read
July 26, 2008TBR add Sherry's Nov 2002 reco
February 20, 2008
Gave up in the middle of chapter 3. Boooooooring.
December 14, 2008
This book was an absolute waste of time. I didn't finish it.
December 4, 2012
Cute enough.
July 22, 2016
I did not get very far in this book so it is still on the shelf to read.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews