(disclaimer: I know the author. But I know several other authors withbooks out and you're not gonna see me talking about them.)
I'm a city boy, raised under the brilliant glow of success and possibilitywhich I saw everywhere around me. This is a novel about someone who grew upin a place where possibility was barely a faint glimmer on the horizon.
It's a novel — there is a character, Lillian Anderson, who undergoes trialand changes as we watch. But it's written as a linked set of short stories(think Susan Minot) and so is episodic. Each of the stories closes you inmore and more tightly, and in each one you see Lillian struggling harderand harder to get out. Unlike Ray Carver, who similarly wrote aboutisolated people on questionable roads, the love and respect the author hasfor these real characters comes through. But not at the expense of an acidpoint of view: "My sister is the kind of girl who thinks letting BuddyFranklin fuck her in the Hoffmans' hayloft is the same thing as a date"
It's a modern Huckleberry Finn, with the modern demons (family rage, thelimits of class) replacing the more-concrete demons (bandits,slave-catchers) that Huck and Jim faced together. But both the characters—Huck and Lillian—share a saucy grit that pulls you toward them, and makesyou know that wherever they are today, their demons are at least a littlebit behind them. And because of that, the book matters.
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