 
|
|
 |
|
Breakfast with Scot: A Novel
by Michael Downing
| List Price: |
$13.95 |
| Price: |
$11.86 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
| You Save: |
$2.09 (14%) |
|
|
Paperback
Publisher: Counterpoint
ISBN13: 9781593761868
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Sam and Ed live the high life, and see no reason to add to their happy twosome. Then 11-year-old Scot’s mother dies, and a wine-soaked promise pushes the couple into parenthood. They dutifully make all the usual arrangements, but Scot is far from usual, sporting makeup and enduring bullying at school. Soon Sam and Ed begin to question their parenting, their commitment to each other, and the compromises they’ve made to live in a straight society. Breakfast with Scot is a humorous, heartwarming novel about the true meaning of family.
What happens when your very own mincing, makeup-sporting Mini Me comes to stay--forever? In Michael Downing's highly amusing and hugely touching Breakfast with Scot, a couple takes on an 11-year-old with a difference. Sam's a prosperous chiropractor and Ed, the novel's narrator, works for the English-language edition of the highly pretentious magazine Figura. Almost 40, Ed hasn't followed through with much of anything, save his relationship. But now swishy Scot could be putting that at risk: I never wanted a kid. Sam never wanted a kid. We were getting a kid because Sam believed a man is meant to make good on his word, and because I hadn't seeded and watered and weeded my garden, and now, when I needed it, I had no abundant supply of garlic to ward off the little vampire. Let's just say that though the boy isn't even remotely a bloodsucker, when he utters that familiar complaint "Nobody understands me," he really means it--and he's right. Well, almost. Within days of his arrival in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Scot's new guardians are "drowning in make-up policies and other moral imperatives," for he is an accessorizor par excellence, prone to wearing pantyhose, nail polish, and various other affronts to things masculine. He's also a catalyst for disaster, pointing up the shame and social booby traps that Sam and Ed have done their best to ignore. Nevertheless, their days slowly begin to take on a familial rhythm, and Downing effortlessly displays the depth and feeling that can come up in the most casual moments and conversations. He's equally good at overt disaster, and even as he never lets us forget the mortifications that may be just around the corner, the author makes us believe in his triumvirate. Downing can snap a line with the best of them, as those lucky enough to read his fine third novel will know. Breakfast with Scot, too, is a veritable garden of verbal delights--and a strong look at the apparent weaknesses and hidden treasures of family life. --Kerry Fried
| Customer Reviews: |
|
| |
| A non-traditional couple unexpectedly becomes parents to a non-traditional child |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
 |
|
My impression based on the first few chapters was not good. I thought the author's first-person narrative was all over the place and I just was not in tune with his writing style. But then I adjusted to the style and I have to admit that there was quite a bit of charm and a whole lot of really funny, dry wit.
The story revolves around a gay couple who never planned or wanted to have a child, but through some unusual circumstances became guardians to 11-year-old Scot, who was the son of the girlfriend of the brother of one of the couple. (Got that straight?) Scot's mother was a drug addict and had just killed herself by OD-ing, and her boyfriend was too irresponsible to take the kid, so he pawns him off on his gay brother, Sam. Naturally Scot is pretty emotionally mixed up and he's a quirky kid who is a bit of a sissy and seems destined to become a drag queen.
The narrator of the story is Ed, Sam's partner. Where the charm comes in is through Ed's hilarious observations, his feeling of being overwhelmed by a situation he never wanted or planned for, and then gently being won over to love and understand this peculiar child, and finally becoming so attached that he couldn't imagine life without him. Once I became acclimated to Michael Downing's writing style, I found the characters to be endearing, and I really enjoyed this book.
Mark R. Probst
The Filly
|
| A Great Read |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
 |
|
Downing, Michael. "Breakfast with Scot", Counterpoint, 2008.
A Great Read
Amos Lassen
I have seen the movie and I have read the book and I have no opinion as to which is better. Both are good and if you see the film and read the book, you will be doubly rewarded.
"Breakfast with Scot" is a feel-good read. It is witty and sweet and it looks at parenthood through the eyes of a gay couple. When Sam's (one of the couple) sister-in-law dies, he and Ed agree to raise her eleven year old son who is an unusual boy. The boy, Scot, enters the men's lives and they will never be the same. When Scot becomes flamboyant which he does with aplomb, Sam and Ed find themselves questioning their own relationship and their ability to parent as well as the compromises that they have made so that they can live peacefully amid straight society.
Scot, in his flamboyance, goes to school wearing make-up and lacy socks; he knows how to accessorize. He is not interested in sports but would like to twirl a baton and become a cheerleader.
The book is very, very funny and has great insight as it looks at the new parenthood. The characters are real and loveable and they take us I an emotional jaunt. I laughed and I cried as we learn about people being themselves and what might happen if someone tried to change them. The book is about family, about raising children and about acceptance and just how quickly we can become attached to someone else and never wanting to let them go.
Michael Downing is a fine writer and his creation here is full of wit. His sensitivity shows throughout the book. Aside from entertaining, the book asks the question of what makes a family. The book explores the meaning of family but without being pedantic.
|
| Film version to be released in U.S. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
Breakfsat with Scot opened Outfest, the LA gay and lesbian film festival, this week, and Ben Shenkman worked the red carpet. It was also recently announced that this film version of the novel with get a U.S. theatrical distribution:
[...]
|
| misguided book |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
 |
|
Honestly, I tried to like this book but I felt that the entire foundation it was built on was false. Here you have a misfocused book with a character being used as a literary device: Scot is a kid who is primarily being utilized as a way for the characters to reflect about themselves. If I knew these people in real life, we would probably have a nice screaming match about how they've got their heads up their butts: All I could think reading this was how this kid was probably parentless growing up while his mom was on the nod, has no dad to speak of, and that everyone is worried that he "clashes with the drapes" about their own hang-ups. Points off to Mr. Downing for using the most interesting character in the book as a literary device to explore the rest of the far less interesting characters, and for clearly making suppositions about what a character like Scot would be like- the book would be far more interesting if the author had delved into why Scot acted like he did than about why and how everyone reacted to him. There are some passages in here that are spectacular, such as the conversation in the living room about the makeup case, but they were few and far between. This is a novel about the elephant in the room and how people react to it, when the elephant is far more interesting than the people. As someone who works with families in recovery this book couldn't be farther from the truth.
|
| More timely after all these years |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
With all the brouhaha in Massachusetts and nationally over same sex marriage and gay parenting this beautifully written book is more timely now than when it was written. Its world, Cambridge between Central and Harvard Squares, is small, like Jane Austen's, but its insight is very large. Michael Downing is to be congratulated not only for his sensitivity but also for his humor while writing about a subject and people that are usually approached with yawnmaking seriousness. Some organization ought to send this book to every legislator and judge who is faced with the subject; the rest of us ought to read it.
|
|
