Vito Loves Geraldine - Janice Eidus

Janice Eidus . . . possesses a fierce imagination . . . inventive and darkly amusing. -New York Times Book Review

Janice Eidus is a sprightly Chaucerian observer not averse to thinking. When she goes in deep and rides the treadmill of the psyche with her people, she makes marginality poignant and nervousness a gift. She is to be praised. -Paul West, Rat Man of Paris

Eidus sometimes revels profitlessly in the weird, but she can also take a bizarre situation and make it wholly human and touching, as in Robin's Nest, about a girl growing up with a mute, birdlike mother. In the triumphant title story, a teased-hair tough girl from the Bronx grows into middle age while waiting for her doo-wop singing lover to come back for her; long after the reader knows she is deluded, he does. Some stories are just right . . . but all are distinguished by irony, intelligence, and unexpected moments of tenderness. -Kirkus Reviews

Chances are you'll fall in love with narrator Geraldine Rizzoli, just the way skinny doo-wop star Vito Venecio did when they were in high school in the Bronx in the 1950s . . . -Nancy Pete, Orlando Sentinel

Janice Eidus, winner of two O. Henry Prizes, is the author of novels Faithful Rebecca and Urban Bliss (City Lights), and the short story collections Vito Loves Geraldine, and The Celibacy Club, both also published by City Lights Publishers. She lives in New York City.