Ovenman

"You can get a job anywhere in America if you can handle a grill."
—Harry Crews
Ovenman is a comic skateboarder/kitchen worker novel by Jeff Parker. There is a website with video blackout scenes by designer Ryan Molloy and songs by Bradley Armstrong @ www.iamovenman.com
"Jeff Parker is a writer who understands that voice is the doorway to all true beauty in fiction. Tight, wry, dark, and deeply funny—he is a master of the hyper-compressed sentence that explodes with more meaning and nuance than should be possible. Ovenman is a welcome addition to the literature of the lovably hapless by a young writer with talent to burn."
—George Saunders, author of Pastoralia and In Persuasion Nation
"Funny, soulful, and energetic, Ovenman is wonderful."
—Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica
"Rarely are mopping and pizza dough so pleasingly rendered. Even inside When's world of chaos, Parker's novel pushes forward with grace. This is a delight of a debut."
—Aimee Bender, author of Willful Creatures and An Invisible Sign of My Own
"Mr. Parker has written a weirdly attractive life of people one thought had no life, the pierced and tatted Xtremes. Creepy, convincing, hooty, and fun. The movie will be scary."
—Padgett Powell, author of Edisto
"In his utterly original Ovenman, Parker has created a time capsule of the nineties in Central Florida and an ode to the mysteries and hopes and acrobatics of youth. When Thinfinger, the skateboarding philosopher at the heart of this terrific novel, is brilliantly acerbic and uncommonly insightful. And awfully, awfully funny. Here's a brief note of which I hope he'd approve: This novel really cooks. Read it tonight."
—Bret Anthony Johnston, Director of Creative Writing, Harvard University
Also by Jeff Parker: The Back of the Line