A Martyr for Suzy Kosasovich

by Patrick Michael Finn

Poetry. "Patrick Michael Finn has written a fierce and frightening, often gorgeously described, swirling, pulsing, sweating runaway car crash of a novella that reminded me of the darker works of Denis Johnson and Hubert Selby. A MARTYR FOR SUZY KOSASOVICH is an unsparing look at the other side of the American dream; the collective rage that passes for friendship in some corners. While Finn's characters are often short-sighted and mean-spirited, his luminous writing and knack for telling detail makes their story relevant and unforgettable"--Michael Jamie-Becerra.

87 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2008

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having grown up in Joliet (Rockdale) I can easily imagine all of this Good Friday from Hell actually happening there! An excellent novella, Finn sets up the situation and rolls with it, always keeping the reader's attention. And I found myself remembering my late teens drunks, just kind of milling about in a fog in a bar, bouncing from bar to booth to where ever. In the early '70's IL lowered the drinking age to 18 for a couple of years there - and there were bars that were pretty much populated by huge crowds of 16-21 year olds (fake ID's, or the bar owners not caring, for those under 18). So yeah, Finn nails it! He sometimes over writes and goes on a bit too long, trying to get the perfect description or mood, but over all his language gets to the heart of these people - 14 and already on a dead end path. The hardest part is starting and ending a book - the beginning pulls us in immediately. There are some loose ends to finish off the novella (whatever happens to Fat and his bar?), but it works. Tough, blue collar lit - well worth a read, even if you're not from Joliet, or one of the other (very similar) smaller, worn out industrial cities surrounding Chicago.

[Linda]

This novella set in the 70’s in Joliet, Illinois, takes place primarily on Good Friday in a Polish bar that traditionally allows minors in to drink on this day. The bar owner does this in memory of his sister who died on this date as a young person. It’s dark and disturbing but demonstrates the pull that culture has on a young person. The “coming of age” aspect to this story is basically a young girl’s crush on an older guy and her fantasy of going to this bar and acting older like the teenagers she’s observed all her life. She wants to be cool; drink and smoke and most of all he noticed. While all that happens, it’s a “sobering” realization that it comes at great expense to one’s self worth and the cruelty of drunken tribe mentality.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brutal and bleak coming of age story, which is also a loss of innocence story, set in my adopted hometown of Joliet, Illinois. The title character is a “good girl”, church-going and respectful of her elders, and yet longs to join the rough world of the teenagers of her neighborhood. Then, one lost Good Friday evening, she finally gets her wish, to both her loss and that of several other characters. I hope she learned from her horrific experience and strived for something better - though not a replication of her straightlaced early life, which clearly didn’t satisfy her - but I’m not entirely sure that she did.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dante's Inferno in Joliet, Illinois

Patrick Michael Finn has the ability to seduce his readers into a place we would dare not go were it not for his accompaniment. And how he gets us to enter that dark realm is by attaching us to a character that seems to be a gentle quiet observer of a world at once repellent and magnetic, and in doing so he manages to not only tell a compelling story - no, scratch that, an extended nightmare - but also almost without our noticing it sets a tightrope walk between our perceptions of good and evil, all the while painting a dark canvas of a bigoted, crass, abusive little inferno in Middle America. He astonishes, terrifies, repulses, angers, exhausts us, and in the end provides only a microscopic light of redemption.

Joliet, Illinois, Lent is ending and Suzy Kosasovich's near absentee parents are of bowling: her Catholic grandmother Busha (her grandfather Dzia Dzia died of cancer) lives with her and is her sole source of light and reminder of a simple if boring life of a religion-centered society. But Suzy Kosasovich is conflicted: riding the bus to school she secretly longs to be a part of the 'gang' of 'popular kids' who don't even acknowledge her existence. She decides that on this Good Friday, after tending to the religious rituals with Busha when will visit the neighborhood pub - the Zimwe Piwo Club whose proprietor, the repulsive but pitiful alcoholic Fat Kuputzniak, traditionally allows underaged kids to drink, especially on Good Friday the anniversary of the accidental death of his younger sister. After accompanying Busha to the Stations of the Cross at St Cyril's and helping with the traditional draping the statues of saints in her home, Suzy is out the door to adventure. She encounters the pathetic dyshygienic loser Mickey Grogan who has made a pass at Suzy (she finds him utterly repulsive) and has subsequently caught his hand in the shredder at the mill, but she ignores him and cautiously enters the Zimwe Piwo Club. It is the Good Friday night in the club that is the focus of this novella, a night when Suzy Kosasovich has her first drink (of many), longs for the sexual attention of the despicable by sensuous Joey Korosa despite the fact the Joey seems attached at the pelvis to the slutty Darly Shapinka. The night grows loud and pugilistic, Fat Kuputzniak passes out, the gang takes over, Joey and Darly fight and Darly ends up in the women's room as the core of sexual gratification for all the men in the bar, giving Suzy the opportunity to approach Joey and discover her first sexual encounter, Darly reenters and beats Suzy into near coma while the rest of the gang in the bar taunt Mickey Grogan to unwrap his mangled hand. The atmosphere is stench, loud, cruel, abusive, and animalistic - and Suzy learns a major lesson from her journey into the underworld and the concomitant realization of that thin thread between love and lust, loathing and desperation/tenderness.

Finn writes so well that every aspect of his story is not only visual but also aural and olfactory and pungently visceral. Despite his main character's spinning through Dante's rings, exhibiting behavior that should repel us and condemn her for her misguided choices, Finn has capably maintained a human being whose fragile attachment to life ultimately touches us. He is a master artist of the darker world of young kids in that purgatory space before adulthood. And he never for a sentence lets us loosen our attention on the story he has created. He is a master craftsman. Now read his collection of short stories FROM THE DARKNESS RIGHT UNDER OUR FEET and confirm that statement.

Grady Harp

[Unmanned Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

A emotionally devastating read and a exceptional work of literary fiction, 'A Martyr for Suzy Kosasovich,' a novella, by Patrick Michael Finn, is an unfiltered story of the strain of religion, sense of place, social-economic class, and a hurried transformation to adulthood, that should be read and passed on to all your friends and acquaintances. Under strain and tension, the story unfolds as if you were looking at a collection of photographs—reality, stark in your face, but if you want a pretty story with uninvolved prose, this isn't it. And it isn't in life.

[Steven Maus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A disturbing look at what happens to the naive when they wander off alone.

[Sam Mauro · Rating 5 out of 5]

90/100

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!!