Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry

by Jen Conley

Danny Zelko, 13 going on 14, needs to get rid of his mom’s boyfriend, Harry. The guy is a creep. Drinks too much, locks Danny out of the house, gets in Danny’s face and calls him Danielle.

Of course everyone blames Danny. It’s his fault he gets into fights at school. It’s his fault he can’t control his anger. It’s his fault Harry is such a jerk. Danny isn’t such a bad kid—he has his own lawn business, makes his own dinner, even takes out the garbage and closes up the house without being asked. All he wants is for his mom to be like she used to be—a real mother who acted like one. Because Harry makes her stupid. When she gets around him, she forgets about her kids. Disappears with him, doesn’t stick up for her own son. And the prospect of spending another day with this man makes Danny feel helpless and broken.

So when Danny’s sister, Lisa, reveals that Harry and their mom are getting married, Danny, never the one to cower, decides to do something. That’s right, one way or another, he will get rid of Harry.

Set in 1983, New Jersey, Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry is packed with Danny’s friends and enemies, a few fist fights, heartbreak and fury, and a little humor too.

198 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 2, 2019

About the author

Jen Conley’s short stories have appeared in Thuglit, Needle, Crime Factory, Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen and many others. She has contributed to the Los Angeles Review of Books and is one of editors of Shotgun Honey. Her story collection, Cannibals: Stories from the Edge of the Pine Barrens is available now. She lives in New Jersey

Reviews

[Carolyn Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Down and Out Books for the ARC. I see that it is classified in the Teens and YA category. I am decades beyond those targeted readers, but I enjoyed it. I found the young teenagers' problems, dialogue and behaviour very realistic. It was written in a way that Daniel's home life immediately engaged my sympathy.

Daniel is a responsible thirteen-year-old boy. He has his own snow removal and lawnmowing business. He also displays a lot of anger. He is getting in trouble at school for fights, some which he instigates, and others for which he is blamed unfairly. This behaviour is getting worse because he is under much stress at home. His mother's boyfriend, Harry, is a mean drunk and even when sober he picks on Daniel. Daniel is afraid that it will escalate to physical abuse. His mother is no help, always taking Harry's side, and she accompanies Harry in his heavy drinking, often passing out drunk. Both Daniel and his sister feel neglected, and resent and fear the day of their mother's upcoming wedding to this vile man. To add to Daniel's distress, Harry is taking money which Daniel has earned mowing lawns.

Daniel fears the day that Harry moves in for good. He makes a list of 7 ways to get rid of Harry with some suggestions and encouragement from his sister and a couple of friends. He is having little success with attempts to carry out plans from his list, as most everything in his life is fouled up. The outcome is not what Daniel was hoping for, but probably the most rational and mature solution for a boy in his predicament.
Recommended for its realistic, and thought-provoking insight into the life and mind of an unhappy teenager

[Rory Costello · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is just delightful. It's nominally a work of young adult fiction (and indeed I would give it a PG rating), but it can be enjoyed by readers of all ages. I ate it up in one afternoon. Many passages are funny but there is also heartache, the kind that comes from uncertainty. Part of that is about where a kid fits in with peers -- but most of all, the story depicts a family that's been broken and faces a new threat. Jen Conley skillfully reveals the nature of the bad guy, Harry, and captures all her personalities so well (in addition to great physical descriptions). She also brings her backdrop of working class Pine Barrens New Jersey to life vividly once again.

There is something else quite notable about this author's body of work: how the characters cross over into and from other stories. By all means, pick up her anthology "Cannibals" (to see Tyrell in "Pipe" plus appearances by other characters), as well as "Waiting to Be Forgotten" (the anthology inspired by the songs of The Replacements, which shows Danny at age 44 and an older Harry).

[TEMI · Rating 2 out of 5]

characters: 2/5
pacing: 2/4
actual substance of the story: 3/5
romance and/or significant friendships: -/5
the writing: 1/4
creatvity: 1/2

9/20 | 2.25 STARS

I hate to rate a book I haven’t finished, but this book is stressful to read.

The writing is really bad. It’s repetitive, and there’s many occasions where the main character acknowledges the audience. Odd. This would’ve worked way better as a journal. I have no issue with juvenile writing, but based on the fact that this dude actually sounds like a 12-year-old and how he’s always throwing in these overdone references, I believe this would be way more tolerable in a Diary of a Kid format. Here’s some of the unnecessary references I had to bless my eyes with.

➤ I lean against the bathroom wall and stare at the graffiti written on the stalls. Curse words, phone numbers of girls, but mostly it’s this: OZZY RULES. LED ZEP FOREVER. JUDAS PRIEST. AC/DC. Like me, the kids in our school like rock and heavy metal, but that’s not everybody and that’s why you can also see things like GRAND MASTER FLASH. JUMP ON IT! RAP RULES. But you have to look hard because that stuff always gets crossed out.
➤ We have Atari and my mom loves to play video games with me. Her favorite is Breakout, which I think is kind of stupid—it’s just a rainbow brick wall of colors and you bounce a ball back and forth trying to break through the top and get rid of all the bricks—but...
➤ Lou is wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt. He’s a heavy metal fan. He’s even wearing a black wristband with silver cackles on it.

There’s also this really weird part where the MC goes on a tangent about the Soviets? It was useless, because it could’ve been used to show how the MC’s mentality had changed between last year and now, but I feel like the author just wanted to throw in her own boring thoughts from when she was his age on the Cold War. All that’s really said is, communism bad, mutually assured destruction, and nuclear bombs aren’t cute. I’m grateful for that creative, refreshing insight.

Pacing is also really bad. With an upcoming stepdad the MC hates, him having nErdY friends, and almost no one on his side, the author makes no attempt at showing how much anger must be bubbling up inside. He just explodes one day, and for what seems like no reason.

Ugh. I don’t like this. But thanks, Netgalley and the publisher.

[Scott Cumming · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jen Conley is known for her character oriented short story work and here she expands an earlier story into a full novel. The plot is as the title suggest with 13 year old Danny Zelko looking to remove his mother's new boyfriend, Harry, from his home and his life. Danny is still struggling to process his father's death and Harry's actions and attitude to Danny leads to him looking to take extreme action to get rid.

Danny's world is inhabited by lots of school friends and acquintances as Danny's hair trigger temper gets him in fights that either alienate or galvanise these relationships. The story is as much about Danny the character as his situation with the reader seeing all sides of his character and left to judge.

This is billed as a YA/Teen novel on NetGalley and it plays as such with nothing too gruesome happening and the swearing censored and kept to a minimum. It plays as such too with it being a story of Danny's growth as much as his situation with Harry.

This is a simple, affecting and engaging tale from an author I look forward to reading more of.

Thanks to Down and Out Books for the advance review copy.

[Giana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. A thriller worth looking into!

[Jim Thomsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A controversial suggestion in some literary circles is the idea that female writers are better at writing convincing male characters than male writers are at depicting women. One powerful piece of evidence for that argument is SEVEN WAYS TO GET RID OF HARRY by Jen Conley, who captures the everyday anguish of being a 13-year-old male in disturbingly convincing style. (The novel is set in 1983, and I was a teen then, and so I think I can say with some credibility that Conley nails it, down to the feathered hair and the continual tension of wanting to be noticed and left alone in equal measure, and not knowing what to do when you feel murderous but suspect deep down that you're not a murderer.)

The story: Danny Zelko's had a tough year: The eighth-grader lost his father to cancer, and months later he's on the verge of gaining a stepfather — a hard-drinking, belittling, combative man named Harry who gains power in the Zelko household because Danny's mom low self-esteem won't allow her to believe she can do any better.) Much of the tension in the story comes from the fact that Harry is capable of convincingly shining up his act and making everybody — even Danny — believe that he's a better man than he seems. But then he reverts to his surly-loser self, calling Danny "Danielle" and stealing Danny's hidden lawn-mowing money for perceived household offenses.

So Harry's gotta go. But how? Danny, in consultation with his friends, starts a list of improbable schemes — creating an imaginary rival for his mother's affections, putting rat poison in Harry's beer, borrowing an obnoxious neighbor's dog to drive Harry away. But when every plan backfires, Danny catches himself looking longingly at the ax on the wall of his garage.

SEVEN WAYS TO GET RID OF HARRY is billed as YA, and it is, but one gets the sense that Conley feels the lure of a more adult darkness, and there are times I found myself wishing she'd gone in that direction. But not having done so doesn't hurt the story at all. You'll feel Danny's growing desperation as his plans fall apart, as his friends recoil from his violent outbursts, as he ineptly stumbles around a neighbor girl who seems to be interested in him if only he'd see her clearly. And, as Harry and Danny's mother announce wedding plans. Something's gotta give, and that something could just be fatal.

Not everybody will like the ending. Without providing spoilers, I can say that the last page is something no reader will predict, and it likely won't be what most readers will hope for. But Conley's choice is an artistically valid one, consistent to the world she's created, and the growing emotional investment the reader will feel up to that ending is ultimately honored.

Jen Conley, long a respected figure in the indie-crime-fiction underground, has written a novel that's got every bit of the appeal and polish of a major-publisher product that's capable of running the mainstream "sensitivity reader" gauntlet that rules the YA world with an iron fist. Here's hoping this bid for the big leagues is not ignored, because this is a book any eighth-grade boy (and girl) would want to read, and will be glad to find. Buy one copy of SEVEN WAYS TO GET RID OF HARRY for yourself ... and buy another for a young teenager you know. Then compare notes.

[Juliet Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny. Utterly believable. A bit raucous. I wish more books hit this tone when writing about young people and how they see the damage adults do. Highly recommended.

[Kevidently · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is what happens when you follow crime writers on Twitter.

I’ve been following Lawrence Block for awhile on the site, and through him I found writer Thomas Pluck. A few days ago, pPuck hyped up his friend Jen Conley’s YA novel, Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry. The title was promising, the cover was great, and having suffered a few stepparents in my day, I was ready for a book like this.

YA has changed since my heyday. You can say stuff like “shitty” and “dickweed,” and even reference the effword without really saying it. But it’s not just the language; there’s a sophistication in this book that feels beyond the stuff I used to read. (Though I could just be remembering wrong; Judy Blume’s Then Again, Maybe I Won’t had a similar feel, with a lot of the anger and introspection that makes Conley’s Danny Zelko so exciting to read.)

Danny’s biggest problem is his mother’s terrible and emotionally abusive boyfriend, Harry. One of my expectations coming into this book was that Harry might not really be that bad, that Danny was just upset about his father’s death and was projecting it on Harry. But no: Harry really is that bad. And Danny makes a plan to get rid of him.

The plans are childish and naive - Danny’s only thirteen and still very much a kid - but his turmoil is very real. His anger comes not just from Harry, but from a world that seems weighted against him. When he’s bullied in school, he gets blamed. When Harry makes a racist remark, Danny gets the punishment for it. Worst of all, his mother is turning into an alcoholic and Danny can see no way to stop her.

Throughout Danny’s sudden rages and pitiable self-doubt, we never feel alienated from him. We ARE him. Not everyone has been in this situation, but everyone has been thirteen. With no control over the world outside or inside, you can end up feeling lost and alone and hated. Danny’s ultimate solution is a good one - the best one - and one hopes it will sustain him. I just want the kid to be happy.

[Lyle Boylen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty decent story here that i think a lot of people could relate to.

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a good message in end.