It Feels So Good When I Stop Book

The hilarious and irreverent debut novel
about a modern Everyman struggling to
learn how to love, choose, and commit on
his own terms, from the highly acclaimed
singer and songwriter. From the first
moment he met Jocelyn, he knew
he would marry her or destroy his life trying. He
didn’t count on being the lucky bastard that got
to do both.
It’s October 1996 in Cape Cod. Our hero—
a narrator so ordinary that he remains nameless
—is a talented but floundering musician-turnedwaiter
who has hightailed it out of a volatile
day-old marriage in New York and further into
his own ever-deepening mess. With no job, no
apartment, no wife, and a six pack of beer,
he’s looking for a clean slate. For years he’s
been dodging life’s extremes, stuck somewhere
between responsibility and freedom, love and
obsession, obligation and desire, apathy and
success. Now he’s seeking sanctuary at the
home that his sister abandoned, along with her
marriage, so that he can sort out something in
his life—what, he’s not quite sure.
Looking for distraction from his memories
of the hot-blooded Jocelyn, who is still refusing
to return his calls, he agrees to look after his
two-year-old nephew. Together, the unlikely pair
catches the attention of Marie, a young woman
in the neighborhood with a troubled past of her
own. As they get to know each other, our hero
ventures into unknown territory, where his affection
for a damaged kindred spirit just might
shock him awake and shake him to the core.
By turns hilariously irreverent and unpredictably
affecting, ItFeels So Good When I Stop is
a disarmingly fresh love story and coming-ofage
novel that refracts with pristine clarity what
it’s like to grow up, and to fall and stay in love in
the real world.

Publishers Weekly

Much like its unnamed narrator, Pernice's first novel ambles in no discernable direction, nudging up against tantalizing stories but never quite connecting. In it, the narrator retreats to a Cape Cod cabin, owned by his sister's ex-husband, after fleeing a days-old marriage. He then spends his time interacting with townsfolk; reminiscing about Jocelyn, his abandoned bride; babysitting his infant nephew; and assisting an alluring neighbor in coming to terms with her tragic past. The author, a noted musician, seeks to emphasize the ordinariness of his main character by leaving him anonymous, but the man is not ordinary at all-he is, in fact, pathologically aimless. He can never quite say why he left Jocelyn and has no idea what he hopes to accomplish in his exile; worse, there is no sense that he has any desire to find out. The main supporting characters, ex-brother-in-law James and neighbor Marie, are more compelling than the narrator, but of course their scenes are marred by the narrator's necessary presence. Pernice's easygoing prose is attractive, but the fetishizing of slackerdom is a make-or-break proposition. (Aug.)

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