Pearl's Picks for October
Pearl's Picks provides monthly reading suggestions from Nancy Pearl, the most widely known librarian of our time. These richly diverse book suggestions provide great reading experiences for readers of all ages and interests.
The Caveman's Valentine
by George Dawes Green
Although he went on to write two nicely reviewed novels, including The Juror and the just published Ravens, I found the latter two to be a bit too scary for my taste. So if you want an exciting mystery and well-developed characters, but nothing absolutely too awful to bear to happen, take a look at George Dawes Green's very first novel, The Caveman's Valentine, published way back in 1994.
Romulus Ledbetter, the caveman of the title, is a Juilliard-trained classical pianist. He's also homeless and a paranoid schizophrenic. (He would say that he isn't, technically, homeless, since he lives in a cave in Manhattan's Linwood Park.) In the time that isn't taken up with searching for food in dumpsters, Romulus spends waging war against the sinister Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant, whom Rom believes is beaming down ultra dangerous Y rays from the Chrysler Building. These rays are the direct cause of all the ills facing humankind, and Rom is convinced he must find Stuyvesant and stop him. He's diverted from his quest because one Valentine's Day morning, Romulus finds a dead body lying in front of his cave. Driven to find the murderer, he must reconnect with the world he'd long ago left behind, all the while coping (or not) with his schizophrenia, his hatred of Stuyvesant, and the "civilized" world.