Black Coffee: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)This is not a novel that invites loving feelings about the nuclear family, yet its loving moments, which are many, are those that linger longest. Nor is it a novel that portrays its one schizophrenic as a deranged, wild-eyed psychopath who wields an axe or a gun. Rather it shows us a gentle soul, one of our country's estimated several million schizophrenics, whose inner world of turmoil and drama is as complex and compelling as the vision of any genius.
What we have in BLACK COFFEE, the first novel from writer and naturalist Jack Wennerstrom, is the portrait of a modern family stripped bare of its smoothest features and reduced to the lurking flaws and scars that lie just beneath the skin. Set in the early '90s, it dares to suggest that what others see as failure or the frightening face of madness may in fact be an old world of insight and an unpretty slough of invention. When the three central characters -- a former street-person, a mail-order entrepreneur, and a cynical small-time journalist -- converge on the deathbed of their mother, the clockwork of a once-proud family is reduced to mainsprings and gears. High descriptive lyricism trades off with edgy dialogue and a steadily darkening plot, and the denouement is as surprising, and subtly convoluted, as any you will encounter.

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Death brings families together. Sometimes. When three middle-aged siblings return to Chicago to visit their dying mother, strange chemistries are mingled and distilled. And the potion is not very pleasant. Will their mother -- an expert on butterflies and moths and collector of rare nature art -- be able to smooth the rift? Or is there a deeper divide at work, one that stretches back through time to their earliest Celtic forebears? This is a hard-nosed love story, intricately woven with drama, beauty, surprise, and imagination. It deals complexly with betrayal, with dysfunction and schizophrenia, and with the hidden power of love.