A strongly written, cool novel about being young, bluesy, and free on a vagabond adventure in Europe.
In Gussow’s (Mister Satan’s Apprentice: A Blues Memoir, 2009) lively road novel, an American grad student spends a wild few weeks as a street musician in Europe.
In the late 1980s, McKay is an English Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University who’s been having some relationship trouble with his girlfriend. When his friend Paul asks him to go to Europe with him, McKay readily agrees to the enticing offer, figuring he can blow through Europe with his harmonicas and amp in tow. A blues fan, McKay is excited about the prospect of playing live music in front of foreigners. He’s someone deeply embedded in the literary world, but his knowledge of and love for music are just as strong. Landing in Pairs, he and Paul check in to a small pension, take an obligatory trip to the Louvre, then it’s out on the streets to start busking, playing music for money. So begins a five-week odyssey, a wild, jazzy tale that includes rollicking musical performances, running from the cops, drunken debauchery, and a diverse array of colorful characters. The meanings of the songs are paramount to McKay: “You’re skiing down a slope where every blue-note is a mogul and you’re working your edges hard, shooting for the sweet spot between major and minor where the world suddenly flies open and the truest thing you know rises to meet you.” Soon, McKay leaves Pairs for the south of France, with subsequent trips to Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. Though the cities outside France are less wild, there are still plenty of adventures to be had and plenty of girls to chase. Gussow’s tale is a fast-paced, enjoyable one, with the harmonica blues angle putting a unique spin on the European trip narrative. It is a nostalgic story but thankfully unsentimental, as rigorous detail and descriptions bring the story to life in explosive ways. McKay on the street in Paris drinking Heineken while playing “Sweet Home Chicago” is certainly cool, yet Gussow outdoes himself with the novel’s revolving cast of unique characters, whose crazy times and back stories are endlessly entertaining. The novel is about the trip of a lifetime, going to Europe to forget everything, but it’s also a story of friendship, helped tremendously by Gussow’s ear for music and dialogue.
A strongly written, cool novel about being young, bluesy, and free on a vagabond adventure in Europe.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9967124-0-8
Page Count: 228
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gloomy indeed. And yet this Arab-Israeli newcomer is never once self-indulgent or sentimental, with the result that his...
A quick, readable, highly engaging—and bluntly pessimistic—debut tale of an Arab-Israeli whose life is one of anger, fear, and broken spirit.
“I was the best student in the class,” announces Kashua’s narrator, “the best in the whole fourth grade.” So it’s possible—isn’t it?—that he’ll go far, escape his family’s drab, broken village, be a great success? He does take the very tough exam for admission to a competitive Israeli school, does pass, does get admitted, and does attend—but not successfully. There’s too much shame for him in a boarding school full of Israeli Jews, shame at simple things like not knowing how to use silverware, what music to listen to, not having the right kind of pants, not pronouncing Hebrew correctly, and shame at bigger things, like the scorn, derision, and threat both in school and on the busses that take back home at the end of the week. Kashua offers nothing new so far—mightn’t this be another tale of schoolboy alienation overcome, true merit being demonstrated, acceptance, comradeship, and success following thereby? No, the conflicts, wounds, and humiliations are too many and too deep. The boy’s grandfather died in the war against Zionism, and even his father was a hero in his own college days, imprisoned on suspicion of complicity in blowing up a school cafeteria. And so, for all his brains, the boy, torn between cultures and histories, begins to fail in school, suffer health problems, lose morale. He never does finish college, but ends up as bartender in a seedy club, despising the Arabs who come in to dance, despising even his own wife, the birth of a baby daughter notwithstanding. Life, at novel’s end, remains seedy, undirected, filled with sorrow, failure, and regret.
Gloomy indeed. And yet this Arab-Israeli newcomer is never once self-indulgent or sentimental, with the result that his story rings out on every page with a compelling sense of human truth.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8021-4126-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
A knotty portrait of Ojibwe life with some winningly uncanny touches.
A young gay man reckons with love, tribal lore, and a decades-old murder in this rangy debut novel.
Marion, the main narrator of Staples’ first book, isn’t where he wants to be, and that’s back in his hometown on Minnesota’s Ojibwe reservation. A brief stint in the Twin Cities ended with busted relationships, but his best romantic prospect in the area is deeply closeted former high school classmate Shannon, who has the unglorious job of attending to animal carcasses on a resort island. Still, Staples, an Ojibwe writer, wants to suggest that the best way to move forward is by facing one's past head-on. The notion arrives first via symbolism: As children, Marion and his friends spooked each other by saying a dog died under the merry-go-round at the playground, and now that dog reappears (or seems to) in Marion’s presence. That incident sparks Marion’s investigation into his high school days, in particular the murder of Kayden, a basketball star who became a father shortly before he was killed. Plotwise, the story is a stock hero’s-journey tale, as Marion lets go of his skepticism of Ojibwe spiritualism, discovers the truth about Kayden’s death, and finds a community along with a degree of emotional fulfillment. But credit Staples for complicating the story in some interesting ways, from shifting perspectives from Marion to other townspeople (with a particular emphasis on Native women), a smirking humor that cuts the mordant atmosphere (“What do Indians call a lack of faith?” “Being white”), and a graceful handling of Ojibwe culture. In its later stages, the story seems to keep sprouting tentacles as new characters and revelations emerge, which saps some of its narrative drive, but it returns affectingly to the messy fates of Marion and Shannon.
A knotty portrait of Ojibwe life with some winningly uncanny touches.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64009-284-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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