Stick Man Review
"The best coming-of-age novel since 'Catcher In the Rye'..." (Literary Review Journal)
***** "Five Stars Out of Five! Rossi writes from the subconscious, capturing the angst of youth in his masterful tale of a boy's finding and facing the truth about religion and his relationship with his first love. Rossi's controversial roman à clef novel is the best book I've read this year." (Hollywood Times)
"Riveting...Revealing and Raw....Sublime....A compelling first love story...for anyone who has ever been in love or longed for love..." (Amazon.com)
HONORS
*Voted to list of greatest coming-of-age novels of all time.
*Recommended reading list for college and high school literature students.
Stick Man is a coming-of-age story about a boy named Jeremiah Young who grows up in a bohemian household: "My childhood in Pittsburgh was one of extremes. First loves hung like photographs on the walls of my subconscious. They lingered there in my memory to battle their antithesis – Stick Man. I didn’t think I’d make it to adulthood alive because Stick Man wanted to kill me."
Jeremiah is an imaginative prodigy but a tortured teen. He paints and plays guitar. His father is a bi-polar jazz guitarist and his mother is a pianist. She’s neither sugarcoated nor vilified. She yells at Jeremiah and wants him to visit “God’s house” with her.
When Jeremiah visits Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church for the first time, he has to leave early because he’s frightened by the bloody man on the cross. He looks for God and finds the devil instead. This is the beginning of his idiosyncratic religious journey:
"I gazed at the man on the sticks with nails stuck into his flesh. My eyes were riveted to the blood....When we exited the sanctuary, I looked up and saw the cross. The beams seemed to reach for me. For a moment, I was transfixed..."
That night, Jeremiah has a nightmare of the beams of the crucifix manifesting into a man. Stick Man. When he wakes from the nightmare, he has marks on his stomach. Jeremiah believes true love is the force to vanquish evil. He meets his first love, a girl he calls “Angel.” When he’s with Angel, his nightmares stop. She inspires him to write songs and awakens something in him that he can’t live without. He experiences good dreams for the first time: "Her lips were wet. I was dizzy. She cradled my face in her hands.
Time slipped away..." They ride the rollercoaster at West View Park, the local amusement park. After the summer, Angel vanishes mysteriously. The nightmares of Stick Man return to his dreams. Her departure remains clouded in mystery. A ghost visits him and tells him to find Angel again. He searches for her, believing she’s the best antidote to Stick Man.
His journey brings him face to face with Stick Man and his search for his lost Angel in an effort to come full circle with his past. Jeremiah has dynamic interplay with religion - and the gradual, ultimate reassessment of his beliefs. He experiences his strong ties to his dysfunctional family and his unbending drive to make art and makes a journey from legalism to love.
As he reaches his twenty-first birthday, he discovers the startling truth about God, Stick Man, faith, and love.
