Nothing much seems to be going on with Francis Falbo, the narrator of Adam Rapp's Know Your Beholder, set in downstate Pollard, Ill. Former rhythm guitar player and songwriter for Third Policeman, his defunct "well-aged, anti-industry psychedelic semi-jam band," Francis lives alone. After only three years of marriage, Francis's wife left him for a square-jawed New York pharma salesman. Francis, withdrawn and agoraphobic, sees himself as "the human equivalent of a cold rainy day... a brown puddle in the middle of a dead-end street, with maybe a Popsicle stick or two floating in my dank, dog-slobbered water."
Francis intermittently writes and sketches a journal tentatively called "Know Your Beholder," after track two of his band's only album, searching for a reason not to sit around and "drink consecutive bourbons and play Minnesota-based, mid-nineties slowcore music." He finds that reason in the oddball collection of tenants in his building: his ex-wife's reclusive, weird brother; a former circus trapeze artist couple; an artist who paints well-endowed nude black men; an overweight, retired schoolteacher widower; and a former first alternate on the U.S. Olympic luge team.
Rapp has a theatrical flair for dialogue, a talent for defining characters by their clothes and music, and a relentless sense of humor. It's no surprise that a man who sketches his ex-wife's body and is obsessed with sex finds redemption in a woman. The daughter of the retired schoolteacher comes to visit, recognizes Francis as "an averagely handsome guy who looks slightly better while playing electric guitar," and accepts him for that. God bless understanding women and rock 'n' roll. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.