The Passion of Saint-Jablonski

by Andrew Mondry

Andrew Mondry’s brilliant, knowing, and wildly funny first novel The Passion of Saint-Jablonski is a book for and about America—not the country we want, or pretend to have, but the one we’ve mad, poor, rich, hustling, suffering, and trying for it all with a mix of hope and desperation. Mondry is the real deal—like Russell Banks meets Carl Hiaasen. Think of the tender, comic songbook of John Prine, the dreary kindness of the New England soul, and that one friend who kept threatening a move to Florida. A great novel by a great writer.

- Dan Bevacqua, author of Molly Bit

What happens when the American Dream collides with the internet age and explodes into chaos?
Stosh Saint-Jablonski, a washed-up golf prodigy, is stuck in a crumbling Florida condo complex that looks like a failed Disney World attraction. When the power-mad condo president vanishes with the community's money, Stosh is thrust into leadership—managing conspiracy theorists, wellness grifters, and internet prophets who make his old golf buddies look like Nobel laureates.

As summer heat turns brutal, so does the crypto schemes masquerade as enlightenment, parking lot holy wars erupt, and a dating algorithm might be government spyware. Armed with nothing but a nine-iron and his emotional support boar Gator, Stosh must hold his fractured community together before his own sanity becomes the next casualty.

Part Catch-22 , part Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , this merciless satire skewers our extremely online culture with dark wit. One man's desperate attempt to maintain order becomes every modern person's battle to stay grounded in an unhinged world.

If you've ever scrolled until reality bent, this book will feel too real and too funny to put down.

331 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Andrew Mondry was born and raised in Western Massachusetts, where he still lives with his wife and two daughters. His short fiction has appeared in Jerry, The Nude Bruce Review, and Weird Lit Magazine. The Passion of Saint-Jablonski is his first novel.

Reviews

[Books For Decaying Millennials · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks again to the author for sending me a hard copy to read, review and enjoy. All views and opinions are my own.
Find a more complete version of this review on my substack, complete with education visuals etc etc.
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Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show truly staggering ability to ‘ignore’ certain kinds of information – that which does not ‘fit’ their imprinted / conditioned reality – tunnel
-Robert Anton Wilson (1990). “Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World”, New Falcon Publications
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I do not enjoy golf. I figured I’d just get this out of the way, seeing as Andrew Mondry has bound the game around his book, like a ominous Golf Course Green surrounding a solitary club house, that is our only refuge. My interaction with golf remains limited to books like this, childhood play-throughs of MICROSOFT GOLF: Multimedia Edition(1993), films like CadyShack, MASH, and of course. Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge. But to each their own...

Within the great halls of [Alleged] knoweldge of The Church of the Subgenius(PRA-”BOB”) [location redacted and currently under foreclosure prior to demolition to make way for a Degenrative AI -Synthetic Breast Topless Bar and Gastro Pub], can be books, pamphlets and dotmatrix printouts describing in detail certain forbidden, realty controling concepts. One of these being Time Control:

“...the SubGenius is capable of believing multiple contradictory ideas at the same time, and being RIGHT about all of them, because a SubGenius can actually visit other universes where each of their contradictory ideas is correct, or where they don't contradict each other. These alternate realities are connected by the Luck Plane, and through Time Control and Sales Magic, a SubGenius can surf the Luck Plane to end up in a different universe where all their wildest dreams come true.”
- Subgenius Wiki Clench – Sacred Concepts – Time Control

Like Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, “Stosh” Saint-Jablonski is the man for his place and time. He’ll deny this, change the subject, or suggest a fresh round of drinks. The Facts of life and the facts of reality seem to only have a passing effect on Stosh, as he navigates the pathways and potholes of life in his Florida based condo community, doing his best to ignore the red flags rising around him, like a high school color guard routine. While not a follower of J.R. “BOB” Dobbs, Saint-Jablonski seems to skirt the edge of the luck plane. Failing upwards, and trying his hardest, through minimal effort to secure some form of happiness. Much to his detriment.

The Truth is a scary, slippery thing, and Stosh would rather not having anything to do with it. Even when sky is falling, and the path before him seems to give way like carboard left in the grass of a humid Florida night. It all reads like a slow motion train wreck, threatening to shatter the dome of the sky. Yet even as the Hoard is at the doors and all seems sacrificed to the Block-Chain. We can’t help loving our guy “Stosh”. I love a book that shoves you downhill, tumbling into a widening gorge of hilarity, pain and high strangeness. If this is what Andrew Mondry delivers with The Passion of Saint-Jablonski, I’ll be sticking around to see what he writes next. I’m still not playing golf though.

[Hardcore Book Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It was in those moments he remembered where he was-in wild, wild Florida. He remembered the first time he saw a water Moccasin wiggle across the lake; the first time he saw a gator creeping along the water hazard on the Ridge's par-three eleventh hole. Florida still belonged to the wild. It was everywhere, peering from behind every bush, and lurking just beneath the gentile water of every swamp, lake, and pool."

The Passion Of Saint-Jablonski is like Thomas Pynchon writing in Harry Crews country if both were terminally online. Stosh Saint-Jablonski is an ex-golf hopeful turned reluctant president of a fading Florida condo complex, hooked on weed and reels and struggling to hold it together. This book has condo politics and conspiracy theories, crypto, cryptids, Insta-shamans and spiritual grifters, general societal collapse, and a mysterious, possibly malignant black ooze. It perfectly replicates the feeling of doom-scrolling while half out of it at an ungodly hour. Is this our world now? Is this just Florida?

[Eric Weintraub · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the funniest books I've read in recent memory. Mondry's Stosh Saint-Jablonski delivers hilarious and sharply observed musings on nearly every page. I laughed out loud many times reading this -- something I almost never do when I read. Yet at the center of the book is a very flawed, very lost protagonist you nevertheless want to root for and can't help but relate to. I think this is a major author discovery from Silent Clamor Press. I'm looking forward to what Mondry writes next.

[N.T. McQueen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of Kurt Vonnegut and the Coen Brothers, this novel is for you. It has the right blend of humor, drama, intrigue, absurdity, and tpyical Florida-Man insanity to keep you turning the pages.

[Emily Coughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was funny, intelligent and extremely well written! I can’t wait to see what Andrew does next!