The Last Good Halloween, by Giano Cromley, Tortoise Books, 2013. 235 pages, $12.
Editor’s note: An interview with the author, a native of Billings whose first book this is, may be found under the review.
High school sophomore Kirby Russo can be an irritating narrator.
Whether addressing the reader or another character in the book, Kirby is eager to demonstrate his cleverness or to employ his precocious vocabulary.
Here he is on the second page of the novel, set mostly in Billings, describing the quirks of his friend’s hyper-Christian parents: “For instance, Mrs. Miller always mutes the TV when the commercials come on. I tried telling her that the entire economic model of television is based on the sacred promise that we, the viewers, will dutifully watch the commercials, and to ignore that pact was to imperil the very medium as we knew it. She was unmoved by my argument.”
A few pages later, his mother and her new boyfriend come home to find Kirby sitting in the living room with a drink by his side. His mother asks if he’s drinking alcohol.
He responds, “It’s a cocktail, Debbie. And don’t try changing the subject.” He also casually drops words like hiati, obsequiousness, graffito and tantamount.
Early on, I will admit, I thought Giano Cromley, a college English teacher, Billings native and first-time novelist, was showing off, using Kirby to display his own cleverness. But it soon became obvious that Kirby only wears his vocabulary like a suit of armor, as a form of protection against the slings and arrows of adolescence.
Kirby himself tips his hand fairly early on, when he takes pains to correct his mother’s boyfriend, who tells Kirby he’s “a pretty smart kid.”
“Trust me,” he says. “I’m not. And I’ve got a laundry list of Iowa Basic test results and one PSAT score to back me up on that. They’ll basically tell you I know a few big words and that’s about it.”
Not that this self-awareness does him much good. For all his big words and bravado, Kirby only vaguely understands the forces and figures that influence his life, and he blunders from realization to realization with the same basic lack of coordination as any other 15-year-old.
What powers the plot is Kirby’s discovery, upon his return to Billings from computer camp, that his stepfather is gone and his mother has taken up with Harley, the rather disreputable fellow from across the street. Kirby’s affection for Bradley, the stepfather, seems a bit tenuous, but he misses the stability Bradley brought to his life.
Before Bradley, each new boyfriend meant that Kirby and his mother “had to adopt a whole new lifestyle, foreign rituals and traditions, like some constantly recolonized people.”
What’s a boy to do? Well, how about rounding up a couple of accomplices, “borrowing” a muscle car and heading to Great Falls where, Kirby’s pretty sure, Bradley is living and from which, perhaps, he can be persuaded to return home.
His accomplices are Julian and Izzy. Julian is a fellow nerd, the son of the hyper-Christian parents mentioned above. His father owns the Plymouth Roadrunner they intend to borrow. Izzy is a junior girl who dresses all in black, smokes cigarettes and actually appears to have learned something from the works of literature everyone else loves to hate.
Julian and Izzy both seem like familiar types, but the more we learn of them the more we realize that their lives are at least as complicated as Kirby’s, and the reader’s affection for them grows as Kirby’s understanding of their complexities deepens.
The road trip is a great romp. Can I dispense with a spoiler alert and tell you that the car is damaged early on in a hilarious bit of slapstick misadventure? What else could happen in a story like this?
The road trip would be entertaining in any case, but the enjoyment for Montana readers will be heightened by all the familiar geography. Great Falls comes off rather badly, but this book was set during the Dukakis-First Bush presidential campaign, and Great Falls was pretty worn down in that era.
Nothing goes as planned, of course, but life lessons are learned and deeper stories are revealed. And Kirby, our young smart ass, instead of being merely a pawn in other people’s relationships, has a grown-up relationship himself.
In the end, most everything is left hanging, as you might expect in a book involving three teenagers, and even Harley comes off as a decent guy. I found myself caring about these characters to an amazing degree, and Cromley induced this sympathy without employing an ounce of sap.
That’s quite a feat.
An interview with Giano Cromley
Giano Cromley is a native of Billings, 41 years old, a 1991 graduate of Senior High. He and his wife live in Chicago, where he teaches English at Kennedy-King College. His father is Brent Cromley, a Billings city councilman.
We asked him some questions via email and he responded in kind. Here is an edited version of the exchange:
Last Best News: Some people, looking at this book, will assume it’s a “young adult” book. I was under that impression myself, but clearly it is not. Did you think about that when you were writing it, or after you finished?
Giano Cromley: I never set out to write a YA book — in fact I was fairly resistant to that notion. I just knew I had a story I wanted to tell that involved a 15-year-old kid and if I was going to do it, I had to set up certain parameters for myself. I would give Kirby all the faculties of an adult; the only thing he lacks is an awareness of WHY adults do the things they do. I would not lower the vocabulary or language to some preconceived level that a young adult might or might not be comfortable with. And I would not sugar-coat or PG-ify the teen experience. So, I wrote it, basically in a vacuum as to the considerations of whether it was YA or not. I think its in-between-ness made it really hard to market. That’s why I ended up going the indie press route. Small presses are more likely to take a risk on a quirky book that doesn’t fit what’s already out there. As for Tortoise Books, they have always believed this book is not YA. Can a teen read it and get something from it? Absolutely. But it’s not written for teens.
Last Best: I don’t want to get bogged down in local references, but I was intrigued by many of them. I assume Roosevelt High is Senior and Prospect Park is Pioneer?
Cromley: Absolutely! I think those are the major local references. I do make reference to a strip club called Cattle Call, which is a pretty heavy-handed reference to Shotgun Willies.
Last Best: Kirby Russo, the narrator, describes his high school as “a perfect example of the typical American public high school. It’s not some elite private prep thing and it’s not some falling-down urban nightmare. The kids come from a wide mix of incomes and, for the most part, receive a totally serviceable education inside these walls. One some level, you can take pride in its complete and utter averageness.” Is that how you felt about Senior High?
Cromley: Yes, that it is largely how I felt about it, and I loved it and completely respect and treasure my experience there. After high school, I went to Dartmouth College and was thrown in with a bunch of kids who’d gone to these super elite prep schools where their nightly homework was more difficult than most of the stuff we were doing in college. While that really set them up well to be academic world-beaters in college, it also left them lacking a certain connectedness to the real world. I may not have been smarter than those prep school kids, but I felt like I understood the world a little better than most of them.
Last Best: Are you, or were you as a teenager, as sarcastic as Kirby?
Cromley: No, I was never as sarcastic as Kirby. (At least I don’t think so.) And if I was even in that league, it was all in my head, since I could never think quickly enough to come out with some of the zingers he does. My goal was to give Kirby a very droll wit, which would serve as a counter-balance to his often-naive understanding of the world.
Last Best: Are you coming back to Montana for any readings, book-signings, other events?
Cromley: Most of the events I’ve been doing are here in Chicago, because that’s just where I happen to be. I don’t have any Montana or Billings events planned at the moment. But the next time I’m in town I would like to try and set some stuff up. I’m particularly interested in doing something at the new library, which I’ve heard so much about.
Last Best: What else are you working on?
Cromley: I’m working on a sequel to “The Last Good Halloween.” I’ve never thought of myself as a sequel-y kind of writer, but just as I was beginning the process of seeking publication for this one, an idea occurred to me about picking up this story two years down the road. It all kind of came together in my head really organically and not as some kind of marketing idea, so I figured I’d have to give it a shot.
Last Best: Your name is Cromley. A leading figure in Montana literature was James Crumley, and his most famous book was “The Last Good Kiss.” Did you have any qualms about the title you chose for your book, given the multiple echoes?
Cromley: Yes, I had some fleeting qualms. I didn’t think any publisher in Chicago would pick up on the reference, but I figured perhaps some folks from Montana would be more curious about that choice. Surprisingly, you’re the first person who’s asked me about it. Crumley was a pretty titanic fixture of the literary scene in Missoula when I was there and I admire the hell out of his writing. That said, our work is vastly different so I never worried that anyone would confuse the two of us. My intent (beyond simply wanting a nice-sounding title) was to pay a little homage to both Crumley and, by extension, Richard Hugo, whose poem the line originally comes from.
