The Obituary Writer
In his delicate and hilarious first novel, Porter Shreve paints a  fast-moving tale about the grungy, romantic allure of newspaper work and the  muddled conspiracy of nature and nurture in a young man's maturation.The  Obituary Writer's narrator, Gordie Hatch, has papers in his blood: his late  father was a crackerjack reporter, his mother a journalism-school secretary. His  environment reeks of his avocation,  too, from the bundled newspapers in his  garage to his comforter, which bears  old headlines like TITANIC SINKS, SACCO  AND VANZETTI GUILTY, and LINDBERGH  BABY KIDNAPPED. By age 8, Gordie is fully  ready to grab the newspaperman's baton, or, more bluntly, to get a paper route.  ("I grew up with a heightened sense of my own importance, which my mother  encouraged," he says. Not least because she seems to have delivered far more  papers  than he.) In 1989, when he moves straight from J School into an  entry-level position at the hallowedSt. Louis Independent, Gordie   experiences an eternal, embryonic sense of belonging within its perfectly   stereotypical nerve center, one that might have housed his father.Sometimes I'd swear I could sense him looking out through my eyes, a  young  reporter waiting for the flare in the sky that points to the great discovery.  I'd stop at the rackety wire machines under the mural of Remington'sPony  Expressto scroll through the overnight news,  then pick up a late edition  from the stacks before taking the long, slow  route to my desk.But Gordie knows he can't afford to move slowly. His beat, the obituary desk, is  either a stepping stone for the gifted or a place to park  damaged has-beens.  When he makes three crucial judgment errors in succession,  he is suddenly  ensnared by a Southern femme fatale--who lures him into an exquisitely drawn  world of highly un-newsworthy bank clerks, dog shows,  and bumbling small-townartistes. A far cry from the collapse of European communism, which his  luckier colleagues get to cover. Though the final third ofThe Obituary  Writerveers into formulaic suspense-novel territory at times, Gordie always  remains engagingly self-aware and the novel's denouement is well worth a bit of  tough sledding. Will our hero realign himself with his destined path? How   strong is fate, exactly? We cannot say, Gentle Reader. You must uncork this   fine, funny novel for yourself.--Jean Lenihan