Joseph Dobrian

Ambitions Joseph Dobrian 1st edition

Teenaged Christine Wainwright?s parents regard her and her musical ambitions as inconveniences. Christine?s earnest, vain elder brother David is the star of the family: an up-and-coming novelist who?s given his parents a perfect daughter-in-law and two adorable grandchildren. The middle child, Melissa, is struggling with her teaching career and a choice between two men: steady, pragmatic Leander Washington and worshipful Connor Lowe. When Christine disappears, suspicion falls on the Wainwrights? scheming neighbor, Andy Palinkas, who loathes Christine's parents. The unfolding mystery exposes the truth behind the Wainwrights? respectable façade: a convoluted saga of unwanted children, disastrous marriages, romantic double-crosses, and domestic plots and counter-plots. Joseph Dobrian?s new novel, Ambitions (Rex Imperator, 426 pps., trade paperback, $17.95, ISBN 978-0-9835572-3-4) is a stark, elegantly written family drama set in a Midwestern university town. It's a story of aspiration, adoration, and betrayal that explores some of the ugliest realities of human interactions. At the same time, it conveys a message of hope to readers who strive to realize their own ambitions. ?The Wainwrights look like such regular people at first glance; even admirable people,? Dobrian explains, ?but you?ll discover that this is a real mess of a family. As you get to know them, you?ll see that their story is like a slow-motion train-wreck: horrifying, but you can?t keep yourself from watching it. This novel is kind of a high-brow, intellectual cousin of Keeping Up With The Kardashians or Real Housewives Of New Jersey. ?As the narrator of the story observes, ?No family flies under the radar. The best they can hope for is that they?ll pass: not unnoticed, but unobserved. Let them be remarked upon, and it?s unlikely that any person, let alone any family, will escape the direst judgment. And oftener than not, that judgment will be richly deserved.? Ambitions is set in the 2000s, but it?s an old-fashioned novel, written in a style that you might associate with writers of 100 to 150 years ago, with plenty of psychological and philosophical twists.?