This is a funny little novel and a fast read but stops maybe too abruptly to make things clear. The story is entertaining and full of surprises, especially Big Rod's sale of chocolate Jesuses!!! It is also a little strange (and the only book I've seen like that) when it seems to talk about (mainly joke about) post-structuralism & feminism but in non-academic way. Like it claims on the back cover the language is colloquial. What makes me hold back the 5th review star is that the author seems to make fun of all sides without taking one on his own, to have his cake and eat it too. If it is ONLY an an apology for "Big Rod" that is sort of offensive. If the book had been longer maybe this would have been clearer. Still it is a fun book.

I purchased for our library and read this book when Charles e-mailed my library and let us know that he was an Iowan and would we be interested in a book by an Iowa author. I enjoyed the book so much that I borrowed through inter-library loan his college disertation (a short novel). I am still waiting for his next novel which will hopefully have some of the characters from the disertation. I corresponded with Charles a couple times through e-mail. He didn't say when his next novel would be out. So we must wait.

I purchased this book because I am taking a course on "Finishing Your Novel" at the Iowa Summer Writers Festival and Charles Holdefer will be the course's instructor. My purpose for reading this book was admittedly egocentric...I wanted to see whether I would feel this man was qualified to teach this class. Well, let me assure you that he is and I have been sufficiently humbled. Holdefer's wit and the obvious care he's taken in constructing his characters will burn this novel into the reader's minds long after the final page has been turned.

Is there such a thing as being too nice, too selfless, too accommodating? There most certainly is in the fertile, funny, sometimes frenetic imagination of author Charles Holdefer (Apology For Big Rod, 1997).

With "Nice," protagonist, Jerry Renfrow, isn't a garden variety Mr. Good Guy who helps doddering ladies across the street, but a hapless anti-hero whose limitless generosity would stupefy a saint. So great is his concern for the total satisfaction of his wife, Barbara, that when he returns home to find her "...spread-eagled on the couch, her chin on a bony shoulder, bobbing...," his only regret is that he interrupted her pleasure with the pizza delivery boy.

For his ailing mother's 66th birthday celebration he arranged a reunion of her old basketball team, the Pantherettes, 1949 Iowa State Champions. The "girls" sank a few in the basket above his mother's driveway.

Jerry's largesse was not limited to family and friends, it extended to his professional life - he operates Home-Made Services, Inc., a company dedicated to doing nice things for others. Subscribers to his service knew that no anniversary, birth, death, graduation or any life event would pass without recognition. For clients he drafted letters of "comfort or praise or condolence" and sent cards on dates registered in his Forget-Me-Not computer.

"He did one-shot gigs, too........in one of his higher priced performances, Mr. Nice Guy jumped out of a darkened stairwell, wearing a ski-mask and flashing a knife, and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a client who was trying to impress his girlfriend." After losing the struggle as prearranged, Jerry got $800 plus a few contusions.

His business is not only booming but it appears headed for the big time with a commission to stage a birthday gala for the daughter of a Sheik. For this occasion he has rented a restaurant and three floors of a hotel. Upon learning that the girl had been forced to leave behind her beloved apricot Labrador when she came to college in the States, Jerry arranges to gift her with 20 pure-bred apricot Labrador puppies.

Prior to the festive event the puppies have been placed in the care of Jerry's employee, Garson, Anything having to do with Garson can be problematic as he has a proclivity for consuming pepper vodka then shooting out all his lights and windows. But, as always, Jerry is kindly patient, hoping that Garson will have a change in attitude.

No such luck. Garson again proves unreliable and Jerry is convicted of animal cruelty.

Regrettably, Jerry's unflagging compassion has not earned him a chair in the heavenly choir, but rather incarceration in a hellish cell where his only companion is James, a religious zealot, a Keeper of the Word.

Yet even in jail Jerry's benevolence doesn't wane as he attempts to understand James's rants and writes letters of apology to his client list until Fate takes an unexpected hand in prison life.

Sound zany? It is. "Nice" is also a rollicking, smile provoking read.

I just finished reading NICE and its review by Publishers Weekly. The reviewer must have been suffering from a hangover or having a very bad day since he/she was dead wrong about this book.
NICE is nice but it's much, much more. One of the truly enjoyable and absorbing reads published in the last year.
Just as I was happily engaged with the whimsical foibles of "Mr. Nice Guy", the story takes a dramatic turn causing me to lose much sleep when I couldn't put it down.
Charles Holdefer is a special talent. It is the reading public's loss if they don't pick up this book because of one unfortunate review by a sour individual.

This Nice Guy in the book gets into impossible situations which are funny and at the same time there's another kind of humor going on around him which is lots darker and angry and told in a sort of deadpan. This deadpan stuff is the most interesting. The writing is very funny even when bad things are happening.