A Better Heart by Chuck Augello

 

A Better Heart

by Chuck Augello

Rating 4 Stars

Publisher's Blurb

For aspiring indie filmmaker Kevin Stacey, it's another day on the set of his first film, but when his estranged father, a failed Hollywood actor, arrives unexpectedly with a bundle of cash, a gun, and a stolen capuchin monkey, he's propelled toward the journey that will change his life.

The monkey, Henry, has been liberated from a research lab by animal rights activists. Inspired by his friend Veronica to reevaluate his relationship with other species, Kevin learns about the pain and suffering inflicted on lab animals as he forges a bond with the capuchin. When father and son embark on a road trip with Henry, Kevin is caught between the egocentric father who abandoned him and the temperamental monkey whose fate is in his hands. With both the FBI and his mother's ghost watching, will Kevin risk his career and his father's freedom to bring the stolen monkey to safety? Meanwhile, Veronica's encounter with an eccentric Catholic priest triggers her own journey toward change.

A heartbreaking yet comic family drama, A Better Heart examines the human-animal bond and the bonds between fathers and sons, challenging readers to explore their beliefs about the treatment of non-human species.

212 pages, Paperback

Published : November 25, 2021 by Black Rose Writing

ISBN : 9781684338269 (ISBN10: 1684338263)

Language : English

Review

Indie filmmaker Kevin Stacey’s life is turned upside-down when his absent father suddenly turns up at his door with a new wife and a Capuchin monkey in tow.

The monkey it seems was stolen from a vivisection lab and is on the FBI’s most wanted list.

Told in two separate time periods from the points of view of Kevin and his girlfriend this has an interesting plot and is well written and easy to read. The main characters are nicely rounded and you find yourself rooting for them.

There are a couple of plot points that seem superfluous to the overall story (pregnancy & cat-woman) but they don’t detract from the storytelling.

Written with a clear anti-vivisection message the author blends this with an interesting father/son bonding theme that moves along at a good pace and holds the readers interest right to the end

The Author

from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/chuck-augello/

Augello began his MFA studies in 2010, several years after he started to write seriously, but he traces his writing habit back to his childhood. “When I was young, I created something called the Scribble Newspaper,” he says. He persuaded his mother to subscribe, but there was a challenge: “I was the only one who could read it, so I was the translator too.”

Later, Augello briefly considered going into screenwriting but decided to pursue a different career path. He wrote stories for his nieces and others that he shared with friends. “People who read them would find them enjoyable,” he says, which he considered an “informal success.” His story “Cool City” appeared in One Story in 2014, which “gave me a little boost of confidence,” he says.

Although Augello says that “creating a conversational voice is something I can do well,” he also admits to “not having much confidence in myself as a writer of prose,” so he was particularly pleased to see Kirkus Reviews write that “the prose style is first-rate, featuring hints of Douglas Coupland and Philip Roth, cut through with the flavor of Beat Generation narratives.” “I work on it very much,” he says. “A lot of it comes naturally, but there’s a lot of craft involved in knowing what to pull back and what to keep.”

Augello’s writing style is influenced by his reading, and he cites John Irving’s The World According to Garp as a favorite book and one that defines him. “I read that when I was a sophomore in high school,” he says, his first foray into literary fiction after growing up on mysteries and horror novels. “I wouldn’t say that it changed my life, but it opened my eyes to a whole new experience of reading.” He continues to enjoy literary fiction and says that Richard Russo is another author who “gets me inspired about reading.”

When he takes a break from reading, Augello continues to work on new projects. He recently finished a short story collection, The Inexplicable Grey Space We Call Love, and he has a second novel in progress. “Here’s the premise: A struggling independent filmmaker tries to reconcile with his estranged father, a failed Hollywood actor, while enmeshed in the animal liberation movement of the late 1990s.”