A Changed Man

A Changed Man is one of the most interesting, funny and compelling books I've read in a long time. (Actually, I listened to it on my iPod.) I didn't want it to end.

The story begins with Vincent Nolan, a skinhead who's had a change of heart and shows up at the office of World Brotherhood Watch, a human rights organization run by a Holocaust survivor.

The author allows you to get inside the characters' heads by alternating the narrator. You get full access to each person's internal dialogue and motivations. It can be sad, thought provoking, maddening and absolutely hilarious.

From the Publishers Weekly review on amazon.com:

Prose tests assumptions about class, hatred and the possibility of change in her latest novel, a good-natured satire of liberal pieties, the radical right and the fund-raising world. The "changed man" of the title is Vincent Nolan, a 32-year-old tattooed ex-skinhead who appears one morning in the New York offices of World Brotherhood Watch, a foundation headed by Meyer Maslow, a Holocaust survivor. Vincent declares that he has had a personal conversion (never mind that it was triggered by a heavy dose of Ecstasy) and wants to work with the foundation to "save guys like me from becoming guys like me." ... Prose doesn't shy away from exposing the vanities and banalities behind the drive to do good. Fortunately, her characters are sturdy enough to bear the weight of the baggage she piles on them. Her lively skewering of a whole cross-section of society ensures that this tale hits comic high notes even as it probes serious issues.