Review 183: Joe's Word

Joe's Word by Elizabeth Stromme
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The completion feeling at the end didn't redeem the book. I felt like stopping early on. Keep telling myself to trust those feelings, move onto something else.

The book was odd, the main character Joe is a "Public Writer" and many of his clients are not your average 'Joe'. This is a neighborhood type book. Joe walks from his dingy apartment to his work, where he rents space in a hair salon. We meet various neighborhood characters, including a homeless man who's rants are fairly factual. It sounds like it should be okay, but there was so much creep factor and misogyny, that I'm surprised a woman wrote the book. The book would've worked better without that emphasis.

FULL REVIEW: (with spoilers)

Perhaps I should have stopped reading early on. It wasn’t all that great in the beginning and it didn’t do well overall. Yet there was a bit of completion, there was a little redemption. But was it worth it? No, not really.

This guy Joe has a business, he calls himself a public writer. He has a small shop inside a hair salon, and it’s close to his dingy apartment so he can walk home and be part of the neighborhood. This is a neighborhood book! It’s about the people in the area, the local characters.

Joe’s main client is this guy, older and retired from tossing peanuts at the Dodger’s Stadium. He like the mail order bridal catalogs, writes to potential women (really has Joe do that) and gets the photos, be part of their life and drops them when they plead too much for him to visit or otherwise make this more than a letter writing thing.

Joe takes up with a pretty girl (Clio) getting a haircut, but doesn’t treat her well, being boring really, just sitting at home reading and listening to classical music. They do go to ballgames on occasion, or the local bar, which is a cop bar. The one time she pleads with him to do something, go to a function her client invited them both to, he finally relents then gets stupidly drunk. Joe isn’t much of a likeable character. This book is full of characters.  [They end up splitting up]

One redeeming quality was the homeless man. Turns out he is one of Joe’s clients as well, has lots of money and donates it. [Gave $10,000 to the local library!] Probably a trust fund guy, but likes to live on the streets and preach. People do pay him attention, gather around him listen to his antics and his “birthday party” stuff.

 Near the end Joe’s ex-girlfriend and him find the body of Beanie. They neighborhood is outraged, has a fund and tons of explanations on who killed him. Then suddenly he shows up in the hair salon. Going to move on. He said the actual dead person was already dead and he just dressed him up as himself so he could fake his death and move on to a new city. Maybe somewhere else they will listen to what he’s saying.

Oh, and all the theories of Beanie’s are supposed to be real and actual facts. He just sounds crazy since he rants about it and is homeless, plus has these props like twirl wind things, confetti and such.

 Joe is a scum ball, womanizing and not really a nice guy. The glimmers of his redeeming qualities are barely anything. There’s a lot of sex in the book, not explicit but deeds and such. Oh, and one of Willy’s mail order brides showed up and shakes up with Joe for a while and he gives in to her and they end up constantly having sex and she’s young, like 20.

And surprisingly this book was written by a woman. Published in 2003 but takes place in 1995. Around the time I was hanging around Echo Park area.