Sinatraland - by Sam Kashner (Paperback)

About the Book

Deftly combining the intelligent wit of David Sedaris with the allure of the Rat Pack, this scathingly funny debut novel tells the story of what can happen when a workaday salesman becomes obsessed with Frank Sinatra.

Book Synopsis

Meet Finkie Finkelstein: businessman from New Jersey, lovingly obsessed fan of Old Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra. To Finkie, Frank is the model of a man -- elegant, sophisticated, talented, with charm to spare. Finkie has modeled his life after his idol; he's seen all the movies, bought all of the records, even formed his own little Rat Pack at work. All his life decisions are made with Frank in mind. Now if only he could let Frank know how much he means to him...
Through a series of letters to his idol, Finkie's life unfolds; a life where Sinatra is center stage, while all the rest takes a backseat. In Sinatraland, Finkie's trials are numerous: a failing marriage, a strained relationship with both his daughter and his brother, an ill-fated affair with an office coworker. But as long as Frank comes out with a new record or film, there's always hope.
By turns riotous and poignant, Sinatraland lays bare the funniest and most twisted corners of the male mind and brings back to life America's most beloved bad boy. Sinatraland introduces Sam Kashner as a sparkling new voice in literary fiction.

Review Quotes

Robert Plunket author of My Search for Warren Harding and Love Junkie Regardless of how you feel about Frank Sinatra you will gleefully devour Sinatraland. It's the Old Blue Eyes legend writ small, transferred to the oddly romantic life of "Finkie" Finkelstein. Harrowing, sad, and very funny, it charts the darker and more complex corners of the twentieth-century male psyche.

Helen Schulman author of The Revisionist Smart, humorous, original, Sam Kashner's Sinatraland deftly explores the peculiarly tragic aspects of an obsession with a celebrity -- the celebrity, Sinatra -- in a moving, romantic, epistolary, tour de force.

James Ellory Ring-a-ding! Sinatraland is the postmortem on Frank Sinatra. Sam Kashner pokes, probes, dissects, and undermines the myth and takes us on a deep dunk into the sewer of American pop culture. This is an indictment of the Voice and a gorgeously wrought hymn to the finger-popping twentieth-century loser.

Jonathan Yardley The Washington Post Uncommonly original and engaging...a smart, funny, knowing novel about what it's like to be a certain kind of American man.

Madison Smartt Bell Sam Kashner's first novel is weirder than it sounds, but with wit and charm to match its strangeness. By turns hilarious, perverse, surreal, and genuinely touching, Sinatraland is what one might call an incomparable debut.

Mark Rozzo Los Angeles Times If you were still with us, Frank, you'd sleep the sleep of kings knowing that the art of book writing is safe in [Sam Kashner's] hands.

Robert Taylor The Boston Globe Quirky...intelligent...very funny.

About the Author

Sam Kashner teaches writing at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. An acclaimed biographer and poet, he is author of A Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant, Hollywood Kryptonite and several books of poetry, and has written for numerous publications including GQ and Vanity Fair. He lives in Williamsburg with his wife, the writer Nancy Schoenberger. This is his first novel.