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Summary
Summary
"Francine Prose has a knack for getting to the heart of human nature. . . . We are allowed to enter the moral dilemmas of fascinating characters whose emotional lives are strung out by the same human frailties, secrets and insecurities we all share."--USA Today
One spring afternoon, Vincent Nolan, a young neo-Nazi walks into the office of a human rights foundation headed by Meyer Maslow, a charismatic Holocaust survivor. Vincent announces that he wants to make a radical change. But what is Maslow to make of this rough-looking stranger with Waffen SS tattoos who says that his mission is to save guys like him from becoming guys like him?
As Vincent gradually turns into the sort of person who might actually be able to do that, he also begins to transform everyone around him, including Maslow himself. Masterfully plotted, darkly comic, A Changed Man poses essential questions about human nature, morality, and the capacity for change, illuminating the everyday transactions, both political and personal, in our lives.
Author Notes
Francine Prose was born on April 1, 1947. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968. She received the PEN Translation Prize in 1988 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991. Francine Prose novel The Glorious Ones, has been adapted into a musical with the same title by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. It ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City in the fall of 2007. Prose has served as president of PEN American Center, a New York City based literary society of writers, editors, and translators that works to advance literature in 2007 and 2008.
Prose novel, Blue Angel, a satire about sexual harassment on college campuses, was a finalist for the National Book Award. One of her novels, Household Saints, was adapted for a movie by Nancy Savoca. In 2014 her title Lovers at the Chameleon Club - Paris 1932, made The New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Prose (Blue Angel; The Lives of the Muses) tests assumptions about class, hatred and the possibility of change in her latest novel, a good-natured satire of liberal pieties, the radical right and the fund-raising world. The "changed man" of the title is Vincent Nolan, a 32-year-old tattooed ex-skinhead who appears one morning in the New York offices of World Brotherhood Watch, a foundation headed by Meyer Maslow, a Holocaust survivor. Vincent declares that he has had a personal conversion (never mind that it was triggered by a heavy dose of Ecstasy) and wants to work with the foundation to "save guys like me from becoming guys like me." Meyer takes Vincent on faith-and convinces Bonnie Kalen, the foundation's fund-raiser, to put Vincent up in the suburban home she shares with her two sons, Max, 12, and Danny, 16. Prose tears into this unusual premise with the piercing wit that has become her trademark. Vincent becomes a media darling of sorts, and everyone wants a piece of him: the liberal donors and the television talk shows; Meyer, a figurehead so celebrated that even his close friends kiss up to him; and maybe even divorced Bonnie, who finds herself drawn to Vincent's charms. In more hostile pursuit of Vincent is his cousin Raymond, a member of the Aryan Resistance Movement, from which Vincent stole a truck, drugs and cash. In these circumstances, can a man truly change? And what is change-not only for Vincent but for the other principals as well? Prose doesn't shy away from exposing the vanities and banalities behind the drive to do good. Fortunately, her characters are sturdy enough to bear the weight of the baggage she piles on them. Her lively skewering of a whole cross-section of society ensures that this tale hits comic high notes even as it probes serious issues. Agent, Denise Shannon. (Mar. 3) Forecast: A Changed Man is less didactic than Blue Angel and is set on a broader stage, which should broaden its appeal, too. Six-city author tour. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A neo-Nazi abandons his Aryan supremacist buddies and joins a humanitarian relief organization. When 30ish underachiever Vincent Nolan, perversely resplendent in shaved head and swastika tattoos, enters the Manhattan offices of World Brotherhood Watch, declaring himself "changed," visions of unprecedented fund-raising success dance through the head of WBW founder and leader--and Holocaust survivor--Meyer Maslow (part Simon Wiesenthal, part Elie Wiesel). But Vincent's presence--albeit polite, thoughtful, and nonthreatening--worries Meyer's secretary-subordinate, single mom Bonnie Kalen, who impulsively agrees to take the skinhead into the home she shares with her sons, Max and teenaged Danny. Vincent is groomed as poster boy for WBW's global efforts to combat human-rights abuses--as living proof that evil can be turned to good. This is a potent, however presently unfashionable theme, and Prose (Blue Angel, 2000, etc.; the nonfiction Lives of the Muses, 2002) expresses it in tingling dramatic scenes laden with pungent (often very funny) dialogue, as she depicts Vincent's growing attachment to his host family, even as Meyer manipulates his new colleague's conversion, and Vincent's past reaches out for him. Not all the plot twists are credible, and it's all probably too long. But it holds your interest, thanks to Prose's deft use of present-tense narration and artful shifting of viewpoints, among Vincent's honestly conflicted need to reinvent himself; Meyer's posturing mixture of selflessness and vanity; Bonnie's vacillations among competence, timidity, and her hunger for love; Danny's obstructed progress toward maturity; and the anger nursed by Vincent's cousin and neo-Nazi mentor Raymond, who knows Vincent is no saint and means to make him pay for his treachery. An edgy, riveting tale, one of Prose's most interesting. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The changed man in Prose's riotously funny new novel is Vincent Nolan, a neo-Nazi who walks into a human rights foundation and announces that he wishes to renounce his previous way of life. His well-rehearsed pitch, however, is missing a few key details, such as the fact that his moment of conversion occurred while he was high on Ecstasy and that his fellow racists in the Aryan Brotherhood, far from being menacing thugs, are really a bunch of pathetic, insecure guys who are broke and drink way too much beer. The foundation is headed by charismatic author and Holocaust survivor Meyer Maslow, who sees in Vincent a way to raise his book sales and his group's profile. Maslow's capable, put-upon assistant, single-mother Bonnie Kalen, usually beset by a host of obsessive worries about her children, is so blinkered by her idealism and her worship of Meyer that she immediately agrees to let Vincent stay at her house, where her teen sons are just thrilled to see some geek leaning his nasty tattooed arms all over the kitchen table. In the glare of the ensuing media firestorm, however, all of the characters find a way to be a little bit braver, a little less petty, and a lot more openhearted. Like novelist Richard Russo, Prose uses humor to light up key social issues, to skewer smugness, and to create characters whose flaws only add to their depth and richness. This may well be Prose's best novel to date. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2004 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Neo-Nazi Vincent Nolan is "a changed man": now he wants to help World Brotherhood Watch, led by Holocaust survivor Meyer Maslow. Reportedly a stunner; with a seven-city author tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.