Cast upon the Day

by Thomas E. Kennedy

Meet the characters running round here, eleven of them, each at his busting Jack Lynch, Bill Gurb, Jazz Jastovic, Charlie Feuk, Mickey Jung, Thomas Brighton, Fin Finley. With irony and humor, their minds and lives are laid bare for us to follow as one goes mad from the music in his brain, another tears his house down onto his own head, another takes off from the IRS with a bagful of C notes. Enter these pages and join this wild melee. You might meet someone you know. You might even catch a glimpse of yourself.

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2007

About the author

Thomas E. Kennedy is an author of novels, short stories, and essays. He has been a journalist for World Medical Journal and the Danish Medical Association and a translator and editor for Copenhagen's Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims and now teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He lives in Copenhagen with his wife, a physician.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[R.G. Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

(With apologies to both Eddie Lawrence--“The Old Philosopher”--and Tom Kennedy)

Hey there, pal.

You say you’re a man in middle to late middle age with a mid-life crisis in your rear-view mirror or looking you straight in the eye?

You say you know more about brands of vodka than about the lives of your children who now live in your old house with their mother?

You say there’s a woman across the bar who’s either too young for you or Republican but you end up taking her back to your motel room anyway?

You say the worst part about impending mortality is the crushing boredom that precedes it?

Is that what’s bothering you, booby?

Well . . . lift your head up high and take a walk in the literary sun with your authorial fellow traveler, Thomas E. Kennedy and his short story collection Cast Upon the Day. You’ll find the comfort of recognition in his array of protagonists who look and feel just like you do. From Lynch in “Years in Kaldar” whose boredom turns into sudden terrifying anger to Gurb in “Gurb’s Plunge” trying to find happiness in his memories of a Cyprus he no longer recognizes to Feuk in “South American Getaway” whose daily tedium is interrupted by an insipid and ever-present movie soundtrack in his head, these are men you’ll know from the inside out. You’ll recognize their despair and might even find something in your own life to laugh about as you laugh about theirs.

So go ahead, booby. Give Cast Upon the Day a read. It’ll do you good.

So long, folks.