Politically incorrect and will be called blasphemous by very conservative Catholics, “A Hoarse Half-Human Cheer
Set after World War II in a time when computers were just a gleam in a programmer’s mind and most states have only one area code, “A Hoarse Half-Human Cheer” gives readers a glimpse of a time when a regional disgrace is not national news because there is no social media, 24-hour TV or internet.
I can’t add more because it will be a spoiler. The description and the advance praise below pretty much sums up everything up.
A fun read that will keep you laughing until the end. Make sure you have some tissue paper or a handkerchief handy because there will be tears in your eyes due to laughter.
“A Hoarse Half-Human Cheer
In this sinister comedy, a small Catholic college at the end of World War II has spectacular troubles. Overnight it has recklessly expanded from a dozen students to 4,500, and the Newark Mafia finds the school a handy front for a racket in war surplus materials. It’s a tough scene for an earthy priest who coaches basketball and nerd fresh out of high school, an apprentice mortician. Both face powerful temptation from a woman biology professor, a sex bomb whose motto is “Nymphomania is a heavy cross to bear.”
Advance Praise
“An entertainment:” is an apropos signifier for this comic whirlwind set in post WWII northeast New Jersey at a small Catholic college suddenly overloaded with GIs. Brightly drawn comic characters {are] driven to collide by their needs and wants in a complex, madcap comic plot that resolves in a satisfying conclusion. I was reminded of the Cary Grant screwball comedies, however with an R rating for comic profanity, vivid sex scenes (one involving our virginal, luckless student reporter who escapes a mobster’s house naked under fire, which caused me to put the book down and laugh out loud). … I found myself casting actors for the movie, which I would stand in line to see.
—John Burbridge
Kennedy has writren an uproariously funny and absurd entertainment that doesn’t disappoint. I found myself laughing out loud at some of the bizarre antics that color this story. …. The fact that this all occurs under the sacred dome of a Catholic college makes … this book not for the religiously faint of heart, though the rest will certainly enjoy it.
—Stephen Russell Payne
When comedy is colored by melancholy it becomes a dark cocktail … A Hoarse Half-human Cheer is that kind of entertainment, but more than an entertainment: it made me nostalgic, sad, and even tearful at times, but I laughed, the way I always laugh at the lunacy of life. A funny thing happened to me on my way through Kennedy’s novel. It’ll happen to you, too. Read it and see,
—E. M. Schorb
