But what is even more enviable about SaFranko is his bull dog tenacity and perseverance; his outright indefatigable will to survive as a writer and his superhuman endurance to go the distance. That SaFranko has continued to write as well as he has through the decades is a testament to his brave talent. With fifty stories published and numerous plays produced in the States and abroad, Mark SaFranko has battled for everything he has achieved.

And despite all this, or more likely because of it, Mark SaFranko knows how to laugh: at himself and at the world. He proves this in scene after scene in ‘Hating Olivia’, a novel that catalogs the misery and misfortune of Max Zajack and his mysterious lady love Olivia Aphrodite Tanga. Theirs is a star crossed love story cursed from the start. After meeting Olivia and racking up a mountain of debt the weeks of unbridled passion quickly spiral into bouts of madness and betrayal. Max tries to keep their sinking ship afloat when he falls into a cushy desk job with a telecommunications behemoth but is strangled by the inanity and vacuity of corporate life. Meanwhile Olivia leads a double life sandwiched between paralysing fits of depression, amplified by booze and pills. They both want to write but do little writing as their life together tailspins into a reckless cycle of desperation sex, self obliteration and denial.

But this tale of obsessive love is devoid of self-pity and the pacing and structure of the novel are masterful. Like the wisest of sages, SaFranko understands that in fiction, as in life, both everything and nothing are at stake. As ‘Hating Olivia’ rockets unrelenting and slow-grinding to its inevitable, unenviable conclusion—to a kind of hell and back—SaFranko's pitch perfect interrogation of Max Zajack registers as the ultimate examination of the consequences and motivation of the outsider, rebel spirit in modern America. A must read for anyone who has ever found themselves at the bottom of the pit, wading through the shit, desperate to claw their way out.

If SaFranko has something to teach us, and surely he does, about what ails us, individually and thus collectively, through the doomed love affair of Max and Olivia, it is this, laid out in clear, hard prose near the end of the book:

They say a real love story never ends. But the truth is that given enough time, love will usually morph into its opposite — repulsion, hatred— indifference. What do you think the world's problem is? It's the exhaustion bred by familiarity and tedium, the transience of romance. You see it every single day in the dead eyes of the men and women on the street. And yet that's the way life itself has been built— everything is going to die. Even you and me. There's nothing that can be done about it. Call it God's joke on us… (p198)

Yes, these are harsh, cold truths to swallow. They run counter intuitive to our sanctimoniously held and Hollywood feed beliefs of love and relationships. But they are unflinching and necessary truths all the same. To read ‘Hating Olivia’ is to take one step closer towards the discovery of reality, to take a peek behind the curtain and reaffirm that the emperor indeed has no clothes.

Mike Ferraro is a writer and rocker living in a New Jersey suburb of New York City. In 2001 he completed an honors thesis at Rutgers University entitled "The Only Freckle-Faced Wop on Earth: Identity, Anger and Shame in the Early Novels of John Fante." Mike is currently at work on a first novel, Due Diligence, and a full length collection of home recordings. He also paints. For more info visit www.mikeferraro.net , or email: info@mikeferraro.net.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.