Skirt and the Fiddle Book

Author of the internationally acclaimed Lord of the Barnyard, Tristan Egolf has established himself as one of the most audacious and inventive young writers in America. With Skirt and the Fiddle, Egolf has given us a novel that is equal parts headlong plunge into the joys and absurdity of infatuation and a love song to the maddening folly of friendship. Charlie Evans is a brilliant violinist who, embittered by a truly horrendous gig, has kissed the fiddle and the entire straight world good-bye. He lives in a flophouse among misfits like Armless Rob, Emmylou Mattressback, and Tinsel Greetz, an ersatz anarchist and 200-proof charlatan. Mutually antagonistic and joined at the shot glass, Tinsel and Charlie nevertheless make a great team, and when they get a highly illegal, extremely lucrative gig killing rats in the sewers, they are a deadly, unstoppable force. The morning after dissipating their hard-earned money, the boys wake up in a strange (five-star!) hotel room with the worst hangovers of their lives. And when Charlie meets the bewitching Louise, who's offered them shelter — well, then he's in trouble of a whole new sort.

Library Journal

In this follow-up to his widely acclaimed debut, Lord of the Barnyard, Egolf creates a bizarre world peopled with cartoonish freaks, losers, and down-and-outers. Narrator Charlie Evans, a violin virtuoso and orphan of Asian-Afro-American parentage, ends up in a skid-row boarding house in Philth Town, somewhere near New York City. Among the residents is Tinsel Greetz, an anarchist and troublemaker with whom Charlie reluctantly forms a friendship. They take a high-paying job hunting rats in the sewers, but soon Charlie meets Louise Gascoygne, a wealthy beauty who somewhat improbably falls for him. Charlie strives to overcome his streak of bad luck and lack of confidence to attempt a happy ending with the lovely Louise. The novel features extended slapstick scenes of comic destruction and nightmarish wackiness, as Charlie and Tinsel run into waiters carrying full trays of food, kick over buckets of paint, and start a street riot. This energetic and entertaining work seems more like an expanded short story, but the author's vibrant writing and lunatic vision might be especially appealing to a younger (college age and up) audience. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/02.] Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.