SLENDER NOTIONS

A debut novel chronicles the life of a disillusioned drug addict.

At the helm of New England native Antonopoulos’ book is apathetic, struggling protagonist Leo, a “bored, anxious, twenty-three-year-old with no direction and a total lack of motivation to find one.” He’s also a prisoner to both his opioid addiction and a brooding, indifferent life stuck in a rural Massachusetts town. Coping with overdoses he barely survives and then rushing to score more drugs from his New Hampshire dope dealer, Leo feeds what’s left of his literary soul by devouring the works of Beat Generation greats like Burroughs, Kerouac, and Pynchon. Not even a visit to a Zen monastery (while benumbed from a heroin fix) can bring Leo any semblance of clarity. While readers may not enjoy their first encounters with Leo, the author, employing a singular, ambitious writing style braiding spontaneous interior monologues with graphic narcosis confessionals, creates a distinctly original novel in which hope floats above all the dismal, rigorously portrayed compulsion. Running alongside Leo’s tale is the story of Cole, an unhappily divorced, middle-aged Bostonian plagued with sleepless nights and fits of rage and regret. After his existential crisis manifests in a near psychological breakdown, he experiences an epiphany, realizing how depression “cushioned me like a trampoline and now I am skyrocketing into each moment.” One morning, he oddly awakens laughing. This sparks an intensive interest in the dynamics of laughter, and he embarks on a promotional endeavor to engage the entire city in his “vision of ecstasy and joy and love.” These two troubled souls converge at a poetry reading and, together with homeless pal Zanzi and love interest Sienna, Leo and Cole launch the “Ultimate Laughter Challenge,” a humanitarian, unification effort that makes them social media stars and challenges both protagonists to move beyond their struggles. In raw, often rambling, but always vividly graphic prose, Antonopoulos’ renderings of desperate, vein-popping drug binges are harrowing, and his descriptions of the frustrations of being trapped in a cycle of opioid abuse and withdrawal are palpably authentic. What makes the book unique is the mix of rapid-fire revelations, poetry, and odd, spontaneous interludes that readers of alternative fiction will savor.

A quirky, multifaceted, unpredictable tale of narcotics, misfit bonding, and curative laughter.