The Scoundral

Romantic rehabilitation and sexual frustration find a tireless chronicler east of the San Francisco Bay in Carl Carrasco, an Oakland chef and candid, hopelessly horny protagonist/narrator of this raunchy yarn from Jaramillo (Going Postal, Chocolate Jesus). Unable to get over the girl he loved and lost (after five years together), Carl sets out to become the scoundrel of the book's title and to numb his pain with large doses of uncomplicated sex. This turns out to be a more perilous quest than he imagined. Carl has high expectations for his one-night stands: he likes highly literate women who love old movies, and they must be the perfect combination of drop-dead gorgeous, sex-crazed and not clingy or emotionally demanding. He finds quite a variety of this exact kind of lady to pursue and conquer, or to be rejected by. He even finds one he actually likes a lot. So while his best friend sends e-mail from Prague reporting his numerous sexual conquests overseas, Carl may stumble his way right into another serious relationship/entanglement if he's not careful. Jaramillo convincingly evokes this loser in love in a self-mocking, scandalously frank first person: ""I felt about marriage the way many girlfriends have felt about anal sex--it's kind of intriguing, but just a little too scary. Could pleasure really be realized through that route?"" Like a real-life friend with chronic romantic woes, Carl's one-track mind becomes a bit tiresome and his rants verge on whiny, but Jaramillo's irreverent wit and a few good cooking tips compensate. (May)