A slender, fast-paced, fever-dreamed excursion that, despite a lack of plot, becomes undeniably addictive.
A rollicking, entertaining adventure on the open road starring two ferocious youths fueled by booze, pot, and canned spaghetti.
Screenwriter and author LaPoma (Developing Minds: An American Ghost Story, 2015) combines the restlessness of youth with the lure of drugs and dreams in his latest novel about young men desperate to escape the confines of their stagnant lives. This character-driven novel opens not with fanfare or history, but with action and movement. Danny boards his friend Ian’s Toyota Camry for what they hope to be a life-changing cross-country road trip, leaving Buffalo for the West. Having recently graduated college, both rough-and-tumble, music-loving men hit the road without a game plan or a goal or even much money, just their desire to start a band and to “write songs and play them on the streets of the Haight.” The novel is frenetically narrated by Danny, a hyperactive, easily agitated 22-year-old with a history of psychological issues, paranoia, and antagonistic internal voices—not to mention the private pain of his chronic anal fissures, which plays out in a series of panicked, agony-wracked bathroom sequences. They stop in Illinois to visit mutual friend Ricky, and Danny smokes the kind of weed he hopes will stave off his anxiety, knowing that “there was no place I could hide if shit turned bad.” Thankfully, in the glaring absence of real plot points, LaPoma adds back story to flesh out the origins of Danny and Ian’s friendship—Danny’s love for a girl named Delilah and their mutual affinity for music. A stop in Iowa leaves room for more music and marijuana. As they arrive in Colorado amid a haze of parties and drugs, the men’s bickering escalates and becomes more personal. They finally arrive in California, where the party continues from San Francisco down to Los Angeles, and the travelers mingle with “hip sexy people everywhere, all groomed and painted and waxed to perfection.” LaPoma, not seeming to know what to do with his perpetually blitzed, spun-out characters, leaves them in Vegas, where they “smoke…a shitload of pot,” have a quick epiphany, decide to stop running, and head home to reboot their lives.
A slender, fast-paced, fever-dreamed excursion that, despite a lack of plot, becomes undeniably addictive.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9988403-2-1
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Almendro Arts
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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