What the Critics Say
About Michael Rips
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Nick Rips was a man his son had always known as a conservative midwesterner, dedicated, affable, bland to the point of
invisibility. Upon his father's death, however, Michael Rips returned to his Omaha family home to discover a hidden
portfolio of paintings — all done by his father, all of a naked black woman. So begins Michael Rips's second
work of memoir, part detective story, part disquisition on the mysteries of identity, part journey into an America
readers will scarcely recognize. Rips is a storyteller with a keen eye for the absurd, even in a place like Omaha,
which, like his father, is not what it first appears. His solid Republican father, he discovers, was raised in one of
Omaha's most famous brothels, insisted on hiring a collection of social misfits to work in his eyeglass factory, and once
showed up in the principal's office of his son's high school in pajamas. As Rips searches for the woman of the paintings,
he meets, among others, an African American detective who swears by the clairvoyant powers of a Mind Machine, a homeless
man with five million dollars in the bank, an underwear auctioneer, and a flying trapeze artist on her last sublime
ride. Ultimately, Rips finds the woman, a father he never knew, and a profound sense that all around us the miraculous
permeates the everyday. — from the publisher
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Beloved of readers and critics everywhere for its quirkiness, its hilarity, its charm, Pasquale's Nose tells the story of a New York City lawyer who runs away to a small Etruscan village with his wife and new baby, and discovers a community of true eccentrics -- warring bean growers, vanishing philosophers, a blind boot maker, a porcupine hunter -- among whom he feels unexpectedly at home.
— from the publisher
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