THE MECHANICALS
A Novel by Trevor Payne
UNSOLICITED PRESS
The Mechanicals is a modern-day love comedy tracking the journey of a young couple, Jackie and Norman, who are brought together by an unplanned pregnancy, the imperative of family allowing them to survive their wild and unsettled twenties and their functionally alternative thirties, ultimately leading them to a deeper understanding of what they have come to mean to each other. The event that catalyzes this outcome is the death of Guy Roche, the world champion MMA fighter Norman becomes friends with through his work as a feature writer for a men’s magazine, Voyeur. Through helping Guy’s family decide what to do with his estate, Norman and Jackie become closer to Guy’s widow, Natasha, a former adult film star who models for them her intuitive understanding about how to exist in the messiness of the universe.
Trevor Payne writes with the pleasurable density of Don DeLillo. But with the beautiful prose comes a wrestling, sometimes literal, with the convoluted state of modern masculinity.
- Joel Stein, author of Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity and In Defense of Elitism
A sexy, intelligent, insightful, and elegant novel about the body, beauty, violence, love, and writing… A singular achievement
-Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Rails Under My Back and Song of the Shank
ABOUT TREVOR PAYNE
Trevor Payne was born in Toronto and raised in Ottawa, Canada. He has an English degree from Stanford University and an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he wrote the first pages of the project that became The Mechanicals.
He was a public high school English teacher for 27 years, an identity he left behind a hundred miles ago when he moved from the Philly burbs to New York City. His writing has been featured in the Eckleberg Review. His first book, A Cup of Water, was published in 2010.