Orfan

Jimmy Deane with an "e" is the quintessential orphan, surviving abandonment twice before his feet touch down in kindergarten with the help of his namesake, the late, great, James Byron Dean, and the quirky next-door neighbor, Gillis Lee Wainwright. Skolnick's novel is in turn, irreverent, funny and sorrowful as she weaves a deft fable populated with a comic and tragic raft of colorful characters meant to be part cautionary tale for parents (and not just those within the adoption triad) and part social critique. ORFAN pays sly homage to the master of the orphan story, Charles Dickens with a clever nod to every writer who followed the master, from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, to John Irving's T.S. Garp. In the process, she skewers almost everybody: religious hypocrites and their greedy institutional masters, the vapid army of the vastly rich and famous with their worshipping minions, and virtually anyone else who shirks their existential duties. ORFAN asserts the sad fact that our reality hasn't changed one bit since Irving published Garp's story in 1978: society will forgive any sin at all if one is rich enough, famous enough or lucky enough. But, we absolutely will not forgive the sin of revealed female sexuality, and especially not if that particular sin produces a bastard child. It's all done with enough humor to make you laugh and enough sorrow to make you cry, with a rock and roll backdrop and a majestically eclectic "soundtrack". Ultimately, Skolnick's central truth is self- evident: the artist is society's finest teacher.