Fintushel, Eliot 1947(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1947, in Rochester, NY.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Santa Rosa, CA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Novelist and short-story writer. Has worked as performance artist, mime, teacher, and musician.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Has twice received Solo Performer Award, National Endowment for the Arts.

WRITINGS:

Breakfast with the Ones You Love (novel), Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of short stories. Work included in anthologies, including The Year's Best Science Fiction and Jewish Detective Stories for Kids.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eliot Fintushel's first novel, Breakfast with the Ones You Love, according to Nextbook Web site writer Willa Paskin, is "one weird novel." It follows the adventures of Lea Tillim, a hostile sixteen-year-old who can kill things telepathically. Lea befriends Jack, a pot dealer who believes that God wants him to build a spaceship that will eventually link to another ship in a parallel universe, taking him and several other "Chosen Ones" to the Promised Land. As Jack's activities propel him toward a classic showdown with the forces of evil, Lea learns, through Jack, to deal with her own demons in constructive ways. The novel, Fintushel told Paskin, is at heart a classic coming-of-age story. Yet it also incorporates many disparate elements, including science fiction themes, religion, and comedy, resulting in what Paskin described as "a blunt, trippy, strangely sweet concoction." Noting that "parts of the book have an inherent preposterousness that would lend themselves to being played for laughs," David Hebblethwaite, writing on the SF site Web site, added that Fintushel grounds the novel "in a gritty urban reality which ensures that, however weird or daft things get, one thinks twice about chuckling." Breakfast with the Ones You Love, Hebblethwaite concluded, "is a fine example of what the maturing field of fantasy can produce in the early 21st century: a work which is not dazzled by the mere presence of the fantastic, but uses it as one element in the wider fabric of its story."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 15, 2007, Regina Schroeder, review of Breakfast with the Ones You Love, p. 45.

Publishers Weekly, February 5, 2007, review of Breakfast with the Ones You Love, p. 45.

ONLINE

Nextbook,http://www.nextbook.org/ (April 25, 2007), Willa Paskin, "Strange Trip."

SciFi.com,http://www.scifi.com/ (April 25, 2007), A.M. Dellamonica, review of Breakfast with the Ones You Love.

SF site,http://www.sfsite.com/ (April 25, 2007), David Hebblethwaite, review of Breakfast with the Ones You Love.