{"id":7558,"date":"2018-11-05T07:06:07","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T12:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7558"},"modified":"2018-11-05T07:43:12","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T12:43:12","slug":"the-lost-empress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7558","title":{"rendered":"*****Lost Empress"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Football,

guvo59, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Sergio de la Pava \u2013 Does anyone these days have the time to read a 640-page novel? I made the time and was glad of it! This remarkable book came to me as a reviewer for crimefictionlover.com, and it bucks convention in more ways than its length.<\/p>\n

In all those pages, a lot happens\u2014interesting, challenging stuff you won\u2019t find in a typical novel. It includes a meditation on Time, an evisceration of professional football, a hilarious take-down of the U.S. health care system, an exploration of the meaning of loneliness and the futility of religion. Fundamentally, however, it\u2019s a kaleidoscopic, postmodern approach to the question \u201cwhat is justice?\u201d All the while, Sergio de la Pava\u2019s sly sense of humor keeps the pages turning, as situations at first merely odd spiral out of control like a poorly judged forward pass.<\/p>\n

Characters are described with juicy details that make their stories tantalizing, and as the story settles down, two principal characters emerge. The first is Nina Gill, former co-owner and brains behind the wildly successful Dallas Cowboys. Family maneuvering gives her a football team of her own\u2014not the Cowboys, the decidedly non-competitive Paterson (N.J.) Pork.<\/p>\n

Nina is a woman who gets what she wants, and what she mostly wants is a winning football team. The NFL players are in a lockout, the owners have cancelled the season, and gutsy Nina recruits men desperate to play. Her second-in-command is college student Dia Nouveau, and the laugh-out-loud banter between tough Nina and can-do Dia is like the script for a screwball comedy, sometimes even written in script format.<\/p>\n

Nuno DeAngelis is a career lawbreaker headed to Rikers Island. Nuno is a philosopher. \u201cThey can put him in Rikers, but they can\u2019t make him live there.\u201d The story of his life in prison, how he gets out and back in again, is written in what you might call a suprarealistic style, not as gritty crime drama, but floating somewhere above reality. But, since he\u2019s there, his various connections give him assignments: avenge a vehicular homicide, snatch a Salvador Dali painting Nina wants . . . you know, the usual prison malarkey. Nuno writes his own brief for his Grand Jury proceeding, and it\u2019s both expletive-laced and morally persuasive.<\/p>\n

Trying to give a sense of the plot of a novel this sprawling is probably irrelevant. De la Pava has created a three-ring circus involving clowns, daredevils, and high-wire performers, creating extraordinary characters from people engaged in seemingly ordinary activities\u2014a 911 call transcriber, a man caring for his ailing mother, a parking garage operator, a priest in a dwindling parish, and a failed doctor who becomes the Paterson Pork mascot.<\/p>\n

De la Pava\u2019s first novel, 2008\u2019s A Naked Singularity<\/em>, was originally self-published, but when the University of Chicago Press discovered and republished it in 2012, it received the PEN\/Bingham Prize for best debut novel of the year. His is a refreshing and unforgettable voice, one that busts out of the boxes of both crime and literary fiction, stretching the form and the reader as well.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"
\nAs an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases\u2014a few pennies to put in a jar to pay my WordPress bills. If you click the photo above to order either of these books, you\u2019ll help me fill the jar. Thank you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sergio de la Pava \u2013 Does anyone these days have the time to read a 640-page novel? I made the time and was glad of it! This remarkable book came to me as a reviewer for crimefictionlover.com, and it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****The Lost Empress - a stunningly good novel, as richly diverse as a Thanksgiving banquet.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[272,52,1288,40,126,1172],"tags":[1443,1445,91,1029,1444,1441,1442,99],"class_list":["post-7558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-crime","category-culture","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-sports","tag-football","tag-justice","tag-new-york","tag-paterson-nj","tag-prison","tag-sergio-de-la-pava","tag-the-last-empress","tag-urban-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1XU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7558"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7563,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7558\/revisions\/7563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}