Rating: 
Summary: A fine book
Review: 'The Book of Ralph' fulfills a major fiction goal for me - taking me to a place I haven't been. That place is the southwest side of Chicago in the late 70s. John McNally renders Chicago in full details and his narrator, Hank, is a great guide. McNally also paces the book in a wonderful way by inserting smaller sections that take me by surprise.McNally's writing is wonderful. He is succinct without falling into the minimalism trap, and he avoids unnecessary detail. The story, place and characters drive this book. The author stays out of the way even though I laughed out loud several times (a tough trick to do without resorting to one-liners). When Hank becomes obsessed with a CB radio, McNally left me hurting from laughing so much. Hank gives us the story without wiping Vaseline on the lens of memory. This is not a sentimental story about the nostalgia of the late 70s. And McNally finishes the book with a wonderful closer of where Ralph and Hank are today. He finishes the story without being too tidy. This is a fine book. I highly recommend his collection, 'Troublemakers,' as well.
Rating:
Summary: Great sense of place and respect for his characters
Review: After Troublemakers and The Book of Ralph, John McNally would seem to rank behind only Stuart Dybek as a contemporary literary portraitist of working-class Chicago. Specifically in McNally's case, we're on the southwest side. But the locale stands in for lots of places-I saw Milwaukee and parts of Long Island in this book. From the standpoint of era, while we're mostly in the mid to late 1970s, it's hard to imagine a reader who was a teenager a few years earlier or later feeling out of sync with the goings-on in these interconnected stories. McNally writes smooth, poignant fiction, and maybe best of all, he never sells his characters short.
Rating:
Summary: Longing for the Ralphs of Our Past
Review: Although those who came into adolescence during the mid to late 1970's can not help being hopelessly entertained by the vivid descriptions of this period of time, as depicted by John McNally in his novel "The Book of Ralph", it would be a crime to write it off as nothing more than humorous nostalgia. John McNally creates characters and life experiences that cause us laugh while at the same time acheâ€"we are able to relate to or perhaps for the very first time, come to understand our own missed opportunities and reasons for the stunted potential of those we grew up with. The two main characters and unlikely best friends, Hank and Ralph, grow up in very different life situationsâ€"Hank coming from a typical suburban home, and Ralph coming from the other side of the tracks, his two barely older cousins acting as delinquent pseudo-parents. Ralph operates as an independent survivor, constantly teetering on the edge of petty criminality which he justifies using the language of a seasoned, street-wise, idiosyncratic philosopher. Years after Ralph and Hank end their friendship, the split orchestrated by Hank’s fear that Ralph’s unorthodox schemes would eventually land him in jail, we are not at all surprised that the two are reunited, and Ralph becomes Hank’s liberator, releasing him from a career and fiancé that on the surface appears to be what every good suburban boy desires. When Hank re-enters Ralph’s life, he once again becomes entangled in or perhaps more accurately willing swaddles himself in Ralph’s world of unconventionality. Despite the absurdity of Ralph’s seemingly stunted-in-adolescence life, we appreciate and even condone Hank leaving a career as a CPA to enter Ralph’s field of work as one who cleans up after gruesome death scenes. In some ways we long to be in Hank’s blood-stained shoes, if it means we would have the attention of Ralph. Ralph represents every misunderstood, completely unique, and totally could-not-care-less-what-the-world-thinks-of-me kid that grew up in areas of our hometowns that our parents told us never to venture too far into. Through John McNally’s wholly enthralling story telling, we come to understand the quirky, charismatic magnetism of Ralph, and in doing so, we acknowledge that the Ralphs we grew up with had the same unexplainable pull on us. McNally draws us into the world of Ralph, and in doing so we find ourselves longing to run into the Ralphs of our youth, hoping they have not changed and further yearning for them to release us, if only temporarily, from lives that sometimes border on the mundane.
Rating:
Summary: You know Ralph
Review: As an eighth grader at Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Grade School on the southwest side of Chicago, Hank Boyd was an unassuming child, a B+ student and a model citizen, the sort of child whose only desire seems to be to reach adulthood with as few scars and as little embarrassment as possible. Unfortunately for Hank, the narrator of John McNally's most recent collection of interconnected stories, The Book of Ralph, this is an impossible desire. McNally, winner of the 2000 John Simmons Short Fiction Award for his debut collection, Troublemakers (University of Iowa Press), provides us with a rich portrait of Hank's attempt to negotiate his way through a life that at times seems to conspire against him. The first thirteen stories in the collection are set in "The Present: 1978-79," Hank's eighth grade year. "A Diagram of the Future," a single story set in the "The Past: 1975," follows, while "Brains of the Operation," a novella, concludes the collection, set in "The Future: 2001." As an eighth grader, it is Hank's misfortune to have become, albeit reluctantly, the one and only friend of Ralph, two years Hank's senior, but a school classmate nonetheless thanks to his failure of both grades three and five. By the age of fifteen, Ralph, physically more mature than the rest of the kids in his class, already has a criminal record and lives by a code that is both befuddling to Hank and perfectly logical to Ralph. We're never quite certain which is worse-Ralph's volitional inclination to violence and criminal behavior or the unintended consequences of Ralph's (il)logic, both of which, at one time or another, threaten Hank's well-being. But Ralph isn't the only threat to Hank's well-being, both physical and emotional. As Hank tries to survive from day-to-day, friends, family, and neighbors manage to draw him into one precarious situation after another. He must survive Ralph's twenty-something cousin, Norm, and Norm's best friend, Kenny, two metal heads and small-time criminals who work at the local Tootise Roll factory. He must survive his snarky, smart-mouthed and mysterious older sister, Kelly; his kleptomaniac grandmother; and his hard-drinking loser-father. These are coming-of-age stories, and Hank's coming-of-age is filled with the small wonders and crushing disappointments of a teenager in the late seventies-Patty O'Dell, Planet of the Apes, the Ford City Shopping Center, Cheap Trick. In the best of them-"The Vomitorium," "The Price of Pain," "The Book of Ralph," "Junkyard Heaven"-we are moved by the juxtaposition McNally creates between our understanding of the world and these characters' sometimes awkward attempts to make sense of that world. The humor of the pieces-and there is much humor-often exists in these gaps, but so too does the power of the stories as McNally brings his characters to understandings that are often not as we had expected. We somehow come to see the world differently as well.
Rating:
Summary: The book of someone you know
Review: Everyone can relate to this book! We all had a friend at one time or another like Ralph,most still do!! Growing up in Burbank it is a step back in time to snorkel hood parkas,sneaking in the drive-in,Argo drift,Peacock Alley etc.What a wonderful book for all ages to read,no matter where you grew up!!
Rating:
Summary: A Winner
Review: I first became acquainted with John McNally's work when his collection of short stories, Troublemakers, won the Nebraska Book Award. In The Book of Ralph, McNally presents a hilarious (and often slightly ominous) cast of characters who populate a working-class neighborhood in Chicago. Hank Boyd, the narrator, grows older but only slightly wiser over the course of the novel; it is Ralph--conniving, creative, and eternally misjudged by everyone around him--who achieves his slice of the American Dream: business success, true (or true enough) love, and respect. The Book of Ralph is vivid, moving, and funny--a definite winner.
Rating:
Summary: Rare Crossover in Literary Fiction
Review: I first discovered John McNally's talents through reading "The Troublemakers"--and it is still one of my favorite short story compilations. John McNally has taken two of my favorite characters from Troublemakers and continued their story through several well-written short stories. The cool thing about this book is that, while each story is a completely sepparate work, together they form a sort-of novel. As a bridge from Literary Short Fiction to Literary Novels, this book is fantastic. Though the stories are at times quirky and somewhat hard to believe, John McNally's writing style and artful integration of these elements makes them believable and highly readable. I find myself wanting to read the stories again (in fact, some of these were originally published in Troublemakers)--a rarity for me. This is a must-read.
Rating:
Summary: Rare Crossover in Literary Fiction
Review: I first discovered John McNally's talents through reading "The Troublemakers"--and it is still one of my favorite short story compilations. John McNally has taken two of my favorite characters from Troublemakers and continued their story through several well-written short stories. The cool thing about this book is that, while each story is a completely sepparate work, together they form a sort-of novel. As a bridge from Literary Short Fiction to Literary Novels, this book is fantastic. Though the stories are at times quirky and somewhat hard to believe, John McNally's writing style and artful integration of these elements makes them believable and highly readable. I find myself wanting to read the stories again (in fact, some of these were originally published in Troublemakers)--a rarity for me. This is a must-read.
Rating: 
Summary: what the....?
Review: i haven't read a book this bad in quite a while. the characters are completely one-dimensional, and the situations seem contrived. the first two thirds of the book is comprised of anecdotes from junior high school, then the last third is just ridiculous in so many ways... it turns into a murder mystery!? what!? it reads like a bunch of short stories that the author wrote with the intention of publishing separately, which is kind of annoying at times, because he will over-explain something that already happened earlier in the book. i gave this book two stars instead of one because, while it was really bad, it did make me giggle... and i suppose i did enjoy reading it, if only to scoff at it.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific
Review: I just finished reading this terrific novel. It's smart, hilarious, and beautifully written. It's also a rarity -- a "boy book" that women will love. Hank, the good kid, is about as appealing a character as you'll ever run across, while Ralph, the prototypical terror, is scary and fascinating, and yet, finally, as vulvernable as any other boy. In a series of linked stories, we follow these two into adulthood. Each piece stands on its own, but the cumulative effect packs a wallop. Oh -- also -- the depiction of Chicago's working-class South Side was so vivid it made me wish I had grown up there, too. John McNally is the real deal.
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