Buffalo Lockjaw
"Buffalo, N.Y., is as much a character as any of the slackers populating Ames's darkly humorousdebut about a young man with a copy ofAssisted Suicide for Dummiesin his car and a 56-year-old mother with Alzheimer's who he believes wants to die. Ames's depiction of James's bedside concern for his mother straddles the line between caustically comic and wrenchingly emotional, while the wry riffs on family tension and the sad state of Buffalo that appear throughout this fine first novel don't undercut the serious consideration of murder or mercy for terminal patients.(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.