Despite my ongoing attempt to get Goodreads to notice that I read books set in Buffalo and the surrounding area, this one had apparently escaped their algorithmic net, and it wasn't on any of my TBR lists. So when I saw it at the dollar store, I snapped it up, not expecting much.

First off, I'll say that it doesn't deserve to be at the dollar store with all the religious self-help books and knockoffs of bestsellers. It's a good contemporary literary novel. It reminds me of the books from the literary brat pack in the 80s; the theme of a young person returning home to find he's outgrown his old friends is one that never really gets old for me.

The details about Buffalo got a little tedious, although I have to admire the photographic accuracy of them. When he says he and his dad went to a Bob Evans a few miles from the airport, I know which one it is. It probably helps that the book takes place in the years I lived there, so it's exactly like I remember it. When he's remembering the 90s on Elmwood, I can hear a friend telling me how Elmwood in the 2000s wasn't the same and how it used to be, back in the 90s. :-) The oral histories are a lot like that too: I'm not sure they added much other than local color to the story, but they were very real. But what really sold the book to me was the dead-on description of dementia and the nursing home. Greg Ames just NAILED that part. He got it exactly right, down to the smallest detail.

The protagonist is completely believable: a little pretentious, drifting along in a job he doesn't mind but doesn't love, exactly at the age when he can see how he failed to appreciate his family when he had the chance. Because of the first-person POV, he can tell the kind of almost-lies that you tell people when you feel like they *could* be true.

Of course, that's also the source of my biggest quibble with the book. James never gets impatient with his mom (except early on in her dementia), never seems to get angry about the way she's changed, never has any issues with the nursing-home staff. For a guy who's not particularly nice, he's way too nice about all of that. It seems like he's going to have to make a big decision--whether or not to kill his mom--but when the time comes for him to make that decision, the story fizzles out. His various romantic encounters are much the same. Every time it looks like James is going to have a major turning point, he just kind of walks through it. Other people get to make the big decisions and do the big things. While that's in keeping with his character, it doesn't make a strong story.

Basically, the writing is excellent, but the plot is... less so. It could have been a truly amazing first novel, but the meandering plot weakens it. In other words, it's a typical first novel from a really promising writer. :-) ( )

I have to set this one aside for now. I don't know if I'll get back to it. The main character is unlikeable. And the storyline is a little too depressing to read during Christmas time.

If you grew up in Buffalo,lived in Buffalo,moved away from Buffalo..this is a good read! The author is from Buffalo,it is his first novel. Son somes home to Buffalo to visit his dying mother and aging father. Very sad throughout the book due the storyline abt his mother,but there is alot of humor in when it comes to viewing life.Lots of local landmarks mentioned in his visit home. Not only a history ofhis life,his parents but of Buffalo too. ( )

The only thing Positive I can say about this book, is it describes what a depressing, horible place Buffalo NY is. I wanted to care about this book but I just couldn't. You knew how it wouuld end for his mother, and you knew that the main character and narrarator (James) would be as much of a loser at the end of the book as in the begining.
Based on other reviews I am clearly in the minority but this book just didn't work for me. ( )

The jacket copy for BUFFALO LOCKJAW states, "James Fitzroy isn't doing so well." I disagree. I think James is doing damn well under the circumstances. His mother is slowly dying from Alzheimers, and at far too young an age. He's still trying to connect with his emotionally distant father, the absolute personification of that title syndrome. Because Rodney Fitzroy isn't maintaining just that proverbial stiff upper lip in the face of his wife's long slow dying, he's got the lockjaw thing down too.

Protagonist James, at 28 a part of that so-called 'slacker' generation, is perhaps a bit slow to mature like so many of his contemporaries, but at least he did manage to get out of Buffalo (out of the shadow of his over-achieving sister) and find a job. Writing verses and captions in the "Laffs" department of a greeting card company may not be the best of careers. Hell, maybe it's not a career at all, but at least he has a steady job, which is more than most of his toked-up beer-swilling Buffalo buddies can say.

But at the very heart of BUFFALO LOCKJAW is the strong love that James feels for his dying mother, who was a career nurse who loved and believed in her work. It is breaking James's heart to watch her recede into the emptiness of Alzheimers, and in his desperation and love, he studies the possibility of some kind of intervention, reading about assisted suicide and euthanasia.

The odd thing about this book is that despite such a serious and unfunny subject, Ames manages to inject a lot of humor into his first-person narrative. It is, I think, the mark of a very talented writer who can make his reader belly laugh and then nearly weep within the space of a page or two. Greg Ames is that kind of a talent, and he manages to do this repeatedly. So what do you call a book like this? Tragic? Yes. Funny? Yes again. Because this is the tale of a deep-thinking slacker, one with a heart and a soul. I guess I'll just have to call this book beautiful. I will be watching for Greg Ames's next effort. This guy can WRITE! ( )