The Poser

January 26, 2015
Rubin’s debut novel is a witty, inventive character study about a man without a personality. Giovanni Bernini is eerily skilled at imitating those around him, able to select “which parts of a person to take and which to leave alone.” The teenager’s talent is also a compulsion, as at various times he is unable to resist mimicking his teacher, a mourner at a funeral, and even a lover in the throes of ecstasy. Giovanni is convinced to take his act to the stage by the immensely entertaining (and immense) Maximilian Horatio, a Falstaffian talent manager. Bernini soon achieves fame in a New York City club by imitating audience members, who are delighted to be instantly exposed, “as if had introduced them to their own flesh.” The theater is run by the sinister Bernard Apache, who steers his star to Hollywood, and finally into politics, a logical trajectory for a cipher such as Giovanni. This dashed-off political episode at the end, in which Giovanni runs for office as an anti-communist demagogue, is the only real flaw in Rubin’s well-sculpted portrait of a man working through a beguiling problem: how to find his voice when he is most himself while aping others.

March 1, 2015
Rubin's debut novel tells an imaginative story of American emptiness.Encouraged by his mother, Giovanni Bernini has nursed his gift of imitation since childhood, practicing on friends and teachers, always performing flawless facsimiles of those around him. Finally pushed into the spotlight by a talent agent named Max, Giovanni becomes, pardon the cliche, the toast of the town, and one imagines an old-timey montage from a 1940s movie: newspaper headlines twirling, champagne corks popping, and hammy impresarios introducing the great impressionist upon stage after stage. This old-fashioned, show-biz quality is one of the more appealing aspects of Rubin's novel-there's even a love interest named Lucy Starlight (a singer, of course) and a villainous theater owner named Bernard Apache. But Giovanni is the center, and he's a complicated figure: a man who, in his attempt to perfectly mimic the characteristics of others, ultimately realizes he has no characteristics of his own. Rubin excels at detailing the specifics of impersonation, as when Giovanni breaks down what different gestures mean-"nodding while breathing out your nose (to express amused agreement), raising your eyebrows while suppressing a smile (mild scandal), or shaking your head while breathing in through the mouth (sympathy)"-or when he discusses "the thread," the aspect of personality that everybody has and on which a great impressionist pulls to begin unraveling the subject ("the thread" is a masterful governing metaphor). As Giovanni drifts from New York into Hollywood, then into politics, then into therapy, the novel starts to feel diffuse, as though Rubin wants to do too much. It doesn't help that, as an occasional screenwriter, Rubin tends to sketch his scenes sparsely-mostly dialogue and gesture-as though awaiting a director to fill in the rest. A strong debut that remains steadily written, even as it drifts away from its best material.

February 1, 2015
Giovanni Bernini (not the Renaissance sculptor; Rubin's choice of names is part of what gives the novel its zany quality) is a gifted mimic, able to impersonate almost anyone with an uncanny degree of exactitude. Talent manager Maximilian Horatio travels to Sea View, where the boy lives with his mother, and persuades the two of them that Giovanni should go on stage. Max takes Giovanni to the City and introduces him to Bernard Apache, who manages a club where Giovanni is billed as the world's greatest impressionist. Next comes a trip out west to Fantasma Falls, center of the movie industry, and a starring role in a series of films about a spy who is a master of disguise. Turning to politics for his next role, Giovanni is about to be elected governor when a breakdown lands him in an institution. As he opens himself up to a psychoanalyst, he learns that writing his life story is a way to shape an identity of his own. Readers who like novels with an offbeat sensibility should enjoy this.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2014

Giovanni Bernini's talent at mimicking anyone he meets has catapulted him to glorious fame, but then he meets Lucy Starlight, the one person whose essence he simply cannot catch. Trapped inside the Chinese puzzle box of identities he's assumed, he must finally learn to be himself. Backed by a six-city tour; Rubin's work has appeared in Best New American Voices, New York, and more, and he has just sold a screenplay.

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