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Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage


dogmatix

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A bookstore rat that quotes Nabokov and grieves for his inability to recreate such literary genious. Plus it takes place in my hometown Boston, MA. My latest book is turning out to be a rare treat!

 

My review to follow but here's one to get you started.

 

From Publishers Weekly

Savage's sentimental debut concerns the coming-of-age of a well-read rat in 1960s Boston. In the basement of Pembroke Books, a bookstore on Scollay Square, Firmin is the runt of the litter born to Mama Flo, who makes confetti of Moby-Dick and Don Quixote for her offspring's cradle. Soon left to fend for himself, Firmin finds that books are his only friends, and he becomes a hopeless romantic, devouring Great Books

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He "digests" both physically and intellectually many of the greats. :D

 

First line of Firmin - Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife:

 

I had always imagined that my life story, if and when I wrote it, would have a great first line: something lyric like Nabokov's "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins"; or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping like Tolstoy's "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

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Firmin, the runt in a litter of 13 rats born in the cellar of a famous old Boston bookstore in a seedier part of town headed towards demolition. Firmin lives on a diet of literature and quickly learn the taste of the "Big Ones"; Faulkner, Joyce, Nabokov and then the actual meaning of the words. He falls in love with the "Lovelies" the women in the late night porn movies shown in the seedy theater next store as well as Ginger Rogers, the "Lovliest" shown on a near continuous reel during the daytime.

 

Unable to commune with his own kind and not accepted by the humans he loves so much, Firmin begins to live in the stories in his head. In his short rat lifespan he looses much and suffers much too.

 

A desperate and woeful tale Firmin is burdened with his own "humanity" and the limitations of his physique. As the neignborhood falls into disrepair and buildings begin to be demolished Firmin watches the bookstore's owner close his shop forever, making a final statement by giving away all of his books and Firmin's heaven is gone.

 

If you love literature, read this book!

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