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Implied memoir and autobiographical details in novels are de rigeur and nearly quaint in this age of the tell-all and ghosted celebrity bio, yet the autobiographical parallels in Thaddeus Rutkowski’s Haywire with its Chinese mother and Polish-American father and mixed-race protagonist and his siblings seem nothing but authentic and original. It’s the subtle and endearing rhythm of the rural Pennsylvanian family that reminds one of the kooky coming-of-age narrators found in such presumed fact-limned-for-fiction classics as Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, Thumbsucker by Walter Kirn and The Fuck-Up by Arthur Neserian.
