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Guess and Check
Guess and Check is a Giron/Valdez Series for Unique Voices in Literature Book
“A stark, engrossing, Hemingway-esque portrait of a life spent in the margins.”—Kirkus Reviews
“ . . . tough and funny and touching and harrowing.” —John Barth
"... Guess and Check is spare, subtle and deadpan, Charles Simic married to Joyce Carol Oates. A beautifully constructed delicate narrative, a near dream of a book, a place ‘vulnerable to anyone who wants to break through the glass.’” —Terese Svoboda, author of Bohemian Girl
from Philadelphia Stories “Guess and Check is a thought-provoking book, subtly nudging the reader to reflect how our choices shape our reality and lead us to our present selves. ”--Mark Danowsky
from "A Gathering of Tribes" “Rutkowski seems to have led a life with very little fear, and has always been open to all kinds of people, places and experiences. That’s what makes him such an admirable He doesn’'t pull any punches; tales from his life are told in such a straightforward and honest manner manner that it’s impossible not to admire them.” —Angela Sloan
Guess and Check is not an ordinary memoir; instead, it is a creative look at the life of a biracial boy—later seen as a young man—who adjusts with difficulty to lessons learned from the behavior of his parents and the people around him. In his rural-America world, he is an observer of dysfunction. He doesn’t identify with either of his parents—his mother is Asian and his father is Caucasian—or most of the children he meets in school. He observes the addictive pattern of his artist father and the ”alien” behavior of his Confucian mother, but he doesn’t understand what he sees. At times he is bullied, at other times ignored, so he seeks a way out.
In this series of short stories, we observe his outsider experience which doesn’t improve during his college years or his life as a young man. His quirky ideas about sex and relationships hold him back. Romantic situations usually devolve into obsessive-compulsive ”acting out.” Such insobriety leads him into dark, half-humorous encounters. Later, we see him as an employee for an unnamed company, where he feels anxiety that leads to surreal incidents, bordering between bad dreams and what might actually happen.
Through the experiences of life, he eventually learns to get along with others, even love the people around him, though these feelings don’t come easily. As a first-time father, he observes the ”alien” behavior of his child; other times, he feels as if he’s sleepwalking. Yet through it all, his journey with his own family ends on a positive note.
“A stark, engrossing, Hemingway-esque portrait of a life spent in the margins.”—Kirkus Reviews
“ . . . tough and funny and touching and harrowing.” —John Barth
"... Guess and Check is spare, subtle and deadpan, Charles Simic married to Joyce Carol Oates. A beautifully constructed delicate narrative, a near dream of a book, a place ‘vulnerable to anyone who wants to break through the glass.’” —Terese Svoboda, author of Bohemian Girl
from Philadelphia Stories “Guess and Check is a thought-provoking book, subtly nudging the reader to reflect how our choices shape our reality and lead us to our present selves. ”--Mark Danowsky
from "A Gathering of Tribes" “Rutkowski seems to have led a life with very little fear, and has always been open to all kinds of people, places and experiences. That’s what makes him such an admirable He doesn’'t pull any punches; tales from his life are told in such a straightforward and honest manner manner that it’s impossible not to admire them.” —Angela Sloan
Guess and Check is not an ordinary memoir; instead, it is a creative look at the life of a biracial boy—later seen as a young man—who adjusts with difficulty to lessons learned from the behavior of his parents and the people around him. In his rural-America world, he is an observer of dysfunction. He doesn’t identify with either of his parents—his mother is Asian and his father is Caucasian—or most of the children he meets in school. He observes the addictive pattern of his artist father and the ”alien” behavior of his Confucian mother, but he doesn’t understand what he sees. At times he is bullied, at other times ignored, so he seeks a way out.
In this series of short stories, we observe his outsider experience which doesn’t improve during his college years or his life as a young man. His quirky ideas about sex and relationships hold him back. Romantic situations usually devolve into obsessive-compulsive ”acting out.” Such insobriety leads him into dark, half-humorous encounters. Later, we see him as an employee for an unnamed company, where he feels anxiety that leads to surreal incidents, bordering between bad dreams and what might actually happen.
Through the experiences of life, he eventually learns to get along with others, even love the people around him, though these feelings don’t come easily. As a first-time father, he observes the ”alien” behavior of his child; other times, he feels as if he’s sleepwalking. Yet through it all, his journey with his own family ends on a positive note.
250 pages, Paperback
First published January 14, 2017
1 person is currently reading
191 people want to read
About the author
Thaddeus Rutkowski
24 books16 followersThaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the novels Haywire, Tetched and Roughhouse. Haywire reached No. 1 on Small Press Distribution’s fiction best-seller list. All three books were finalists for an Asian American Literary Award. He teaches at Medgar Evers College and at the Writer’s Voice of the West Side YMCA in New York. His writing has appeared in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Fiction and Fiction International. He received a 2012 fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 5, 2019
This is a beautifully written book, full of insightful surprises.
October 2, 2017
Thaddeus Rutkowski’s novel ‘Guess and Check,’ is a novel of mystery though nobody is murdered in the story. A son, which is likely the writer himself, tells the story of growing up with a Caucasian father and an Asian mother and assorted other relatives. His father can be hilarious. His more outrageous statements called to my mind those of Ignatius J Reilly in O’Toole’s 'A Confederacy of Dunces'. But there are other things that the father says and does that are not at all funny and seemed downright menacing to this reader. And that’s where the comparison ends and the mystery begins – just who is this father? The son faithfully records his father’s every outrageous quip and his ‘is-he-or-isn’t he’ behavior but that’s all the son records. He doesn’t ask his father what he’s up to; he doesn’t explain even to himself how he feels about his father. Miraculously, the son grows up and seems successful… until his dreams - or are they nightmares - begin. As for the actual writing - every single word in every single sentence is spoken with the simplicity and directness of a child but could that be the child haunting the author even now?
November 14, 2017
Thad Rutkowski has made quite a franchise—one might even say genre—out of family dysfunction. I do not say this lightly or facetiously. In his previous autobiographical fiction Tetched (Behler Publications) and Roughhouse (Kaya Press), we meet a father with a persecution complex; a Chinese mother who’s mostly quiet and submissive but makes the occasional barbed retort; and a brother and sister who are just as isolated as Rutkowski’s protagonist, recognizing the symptoms but powerless to alleviate them....
Read the full review at https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2....
Read the full review at https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2....
February 10, 2024
An insightful reflection of coming of age.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews