John Dufresne

Olney Kartheizer has tried his best with his son, Cully, as most parents do. “Sons are a heritage from the lord; children are a reward,” notes one childless television reverend who later befriends Olney. But Olney’s best isn’t enough, as sometimes happens. Cully, intelligent and loved, chooses drugs and the many betrayals and disappointments that comes with them. The strain is too much for Olney’s marriage to Kat. There are attempts to get Cully home, stints in rehab. It’s never show more enough. Happiness, which Olney knows is “a side effect of aspiration and struggle,” eludes Cully.

Olney has a small group of friends who become almost family, like the family he had but couldn’t keep. His new and terminally ill girlfriend dies not long into their relationship. He traverses Florida with the intention of getting Cully either home, into rehab or to an intervention. Whatever he can do. It’s never enough.

There’s warmth, love and even many moments of humor in the story. They help to alleviate the dark periods, as they do in life.

The fragility of life is at the center of this novel, and the acknowledgement that we probably don’t have as much time as we’d like with those we love and care about. As one character says, “The price of love is grief, and grief becomes remembrance, and remembrance restores the love. You don’t lose what you keep in your heart.” But you still lose the person, often. show less

There is crime, murder and suspense in this mystery, but with humanity at the center. Not necessarily morality, but humanity. Wylie Coyote, a therapist with supreme cognitive powers, is in Las Vegas, letting things cool down in Florida. He and his buddy, Bay Lettique, a poker-playing magician, witness a murder that Wylie, again, can’t ignore. Being Las Vegas, where people “seem content to kill what little time they have left slumping for hours in front of machines that are more animated show more than they are,” he spends a lot of time in casinos and hotels. And observing the denizens, often while eating finger food and sampling exotic drinks. “We took a shaded poolside table at the Jade Mountain Bar and ordered two Maogaritas. (Just what you’d think, but with lychee liqueur added.)”

Maybe there is a moral center too. Wylie is a moralist, and is even called a prude. He’s against murder, kidnapping, underage prostitution, bad manners, all rampant in the Las Vegas he sees. There’s also an underlying layer of humor throughout that elevates the story even further. show less

Wylie Melville is a therapist in Eden, Florida who helps out the police as a consultant by reading crime scenes. After a particularly gruesome scene involving a family murdered on Christmas Eve Wylie can’t let it go, even after the investigation is closed.

Wylie draws the wrath of the local police after reporting a crooked cop for stealing a watch at the crime scene, and also for not backing off. He values honesty and integrity and is surrounded by the opposite. “Does anyone tell the show more truth anymore?” he asks himself. He’s unfortunate enough to live in “the most corrupt county in the state, maybe the country.” There’s so much death and violence in Eden, that even reference librarians are jaded.

Wylie’s luck is such that when he comments on a criminal’s revolting cologne, a case of it shows up on his doorstep. And not even the real scent, a flea-market imitation of a bad cologne.

In keeping Wylie’s status as a hyper-observer, No Regrets, Coyote is packed with vivid detail. Nothing goes unobserved. The story is carried along on a wave of detail that keeps things alive and appealing.

Dufresne has a firm grasp of contemporary South Florida and its cultural mush. Much of the humor in the story comes from the telling detail of how people live, interact, dress and act these days in Florida. He also has a knack for creating unusual names: Chaffin Halliday, Doody, Bay Levette, Lincoln Clockedile, and my favorite, Clete Meatyard, are among a few.

No Regrets, Coyote is engaging, humorous and meaningful all the way through, which isn’t easy to pull off. show less

First of all, the parts at the beginning of this book, where the narrator is discussing whether to write a memoir or not? Are maybe not as much fiction as you might understandably think, if you are not from Worcester, Mass., the more or less completely undisguised antecedent of the city of Requiem. (Sometimes the names are changed, but so much more often they're just not.)

Requiem is a darkly hilarious tale of a family totally unable to hold onto itself, together or separately, in any sense show more of the phrase. I love Dufresne's style and writing, and I'm especially fond of his other work, but this was really, really hard to read. The city he describes is the city of my birth, and his too; my parents are his contemporaries. If you're from Worcester, particularly if you grew up there in the fifties and sixties, you will read this book terrified you'll turn a page and run up against someone you know or are related to. If you grew up there in the seventies or eighties, you'll turn the pages afraid you'll see your parents.

AND YOU MIGHT. You really, really might. It's terrifying. But if you're from there you really, really have to read it anyway. And then you will probably want to make everyone else you know from there read it too. I made my mom and her sister read it. Her sister found a co-worker. My mom found some of her dad's cousins. My parents passed it on to everyone they could think of from their old neighborhood. It's like watching a train wreck - you can't look away - but it is also awesome.

If you are not from there, I can't help you. I loved the book, but I cannot imagine what the experience of reading it without an intimate knowledge of the city is like. show less