The Last Romantic
by Matt Bloom
Hatherleigh Press, 184 pages
It’s one of those books where you get half way into it and smile and say “wow what a cool bunch of effed-up characters!”
Matt Bloom’s The Last Romantic follows a group of disparate, deseperate, and very selfish people whose paths cross for good or ill as they try to realize their dreams and sins in Las Vegas. David Hirschberg plays a rather wimpy hero, traipsing across the country in escape from his domineering parents, and hoping beyond hope to lose his virginity. Come on... if you can’t do it in Las Vegas...???
Mona Tworttle appears as a has-been beauty who likes to target and torture lonely horny men... just because she can. Nevada governor Hank Graham takes full advantage of his state's vices; he doesn’t care how many people he needs to inconvenience in order to keep his seat. It all mashes together, and by the time you hit the last 30 pages or so, a question arises in your mind... how is Bloom going to tie all this up so quickly?
If you’re waiting for everyone to get their just desserts... well, it won’t spoil it to say... things don’t always come out as expected, and David learns a few interesting lessons of love and loyalty, and what’s important when, to whom.
Much of this takes place at the “New Jersey: The Casino,” a rather witty invention on Bloom’s part – lounges are named after Highway exits, and how much glitz can you put in “Industrial?” Here ya go!
As young David searches the New Jersey for his first conquest, his posing and posturing (this is the quintissential kid who thinks he's slick but is more like sandpaper) run him afoul of the casino operator’s son, a rather stupid and unlikeable Paul Tucci, and into a murder-for-hire scheme with an increasingly desperate Mona.
It reads pretty well... short chapters urge you to keep reading to get just one more sliver of "what happens next." It took me a bit to get into it... and every now and then you might read a sentence to make you pause and ask “where was the editor on this one?” but it caught me soon enough and I polished off the last 2/3 of this short book in a day. Oddly enough, if it needs anything, it's a few more pages of denoument. But if you like to breeze through a lighthearted satire, Bloom’s third novel is a good read.
Matt's earlier novels are A Death in the Hamptons and Blue Paradise.
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