Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

 

Our Rating 5⭐s

You can buy Demon Copperhead...Here

Find out about the author...Here

• The Blurb...

Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single wide trailer, looking like a little blue prizefighter. For the life ahead of him he would need all that fighting spirit along with buckets of charm, a quick wit and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.

In the southern Appalachain Mountains of Virginia, poverty isnt an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents and friends. "Family" could mean love or reluctant foster care For Demon born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day.

Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between.

 

• Our Review...

Often, when I read a book that has won multiple awards and received huge hype I find myself sub-consciously raising the bar that the book get over to genuinely feel loved by me. It's a " you come into my zone all hyped up with your medals thinking you can win, well we'll see about that!" There have not been many up to the challenge. Barbara Kingsolver has done it easy pops. 

What a ride. Famously based on Charles Dickens's David Copperhead, it also feels a little like trainspotting meets The Dukes of Hazzard but without the happy bits. But OMG what a powerful, emotional book.. 

We follow the life of Damon, a melungeon child, from birth to adulthood. Damon (or Demon as he becomes known) does not win the lottery of life.. No life of Princes William or Harry for him. He is born to an  addicted, trailer-dwelling, poor mother with a dead father. And things just get worse from here on. It is hugely Dickensian in its depiction of childhood poverty and exploitation. Add to this mix an abusive stepfather, cruel foster homes and the cherry on the cake, massive industrial scale opioid abuse. It sounds like a horrific read and yes at times it is very challenging. If you have even an ounce of empathy it will make you cry. But this book makes you feel everything.

The novel is written in southern USA states vernacular which it had to be as the location is intrinsic to the story. It does take some getting used to as a Brit. But it is worth it as it adds an authenticity to the narrative. I felt a strong association with the people of Appalachia. A historically strong coal mining area that was the powerhouse of the country, both now having been sucked dry of both coal and money have been left to rot by their national political overlords. Good people that have been ridiculed in the media as stupid, incestuous, bestial. It seemed to me that she could have been writing about Wales, and it broke my heart just a little more. 

The book was choc full of literary gems. See selected quotes for a few. When reading I highlighted 60+ quotes that I could use to demsonstare Kingsolver's similie and metaphor use or to show her clarity of thought. A gifted writer she can explain complex situations in few words.. Masterful.

Over the years I have often read of the mythical quest to find the great American novel or author e.g. Hemmingway, Faulkner, McCarthy, Steinbeck. All of these authors I feel searching for the distillation of what is America. I get the impression that they see the essence of America as a candle light in the darkness, a hope that truth and justice will guide us home.  I feel Kingsolver sees  it for what it is. An oncoming train heading down the tunnel.A train  that doesn't care if it goes through you, your friends, your family or your people. People are a resource or source of income to be used and abused. Government of the people, by the people, for the people = absolute bollox. And the same applies in the UK. Corporations, Media, Tech, power, super wealth, corruption it all stinks like a whores draws. Nothing is done for the people and hasn't for a long time. Kingsolver sees this and this is why this is the great American novel.

When reading this book I think it helps if the reader is of a certain age and has suffered some of what circumstance and poverty can inflict. Demon may be our protagonist but ultimately it is the backdrop that takes centre stage. Life in all it's rawness will engulf us all at some stage. It can overwhelm for entire lifespan if we let it. Ultimately this book isn't about poverty, addiction, loss or fate, it's about a more important thing than that. It's about how we face these things. Do we curl up into a ball and just take the kicking or say no I am not accepting that. I am going to be better and tomorrow I will be better than today. What is inside me is more important than what is outside. 

This is a great book. It will be in my top 10 of all time and I will read the Poison Wood Bible. 

• Selected Quotes...

Kid born to the junkie is a junkie. He’ll grow up to be everything you don’t want to know, the rotten teeth and dead-zone eyes,

A whole new life for young Demon was Stoner’s plan, described to me one morning at breakfast after Mom left for work. I was going to learn self-discipline, like they teach you in the army. Not that Stoner had done military service, mind you. I reckon he saw the movie.

By the time Mariah got to the courtroom her scars were healed. Not his. If you’ve noticed, it’s the prettiest people that everybody wants to believe,

If you’re standing on a small pile of shit, fighting for your one place to stand, God almighty how you fight.

We both lay back down, and she looked at me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while. I’ll never forget how that felt. Like not being hungry.

Being checked out of school mentalwise for the last year and then some, I was so far behind it looked like a race with my own ass. But the weirdness wasn’t in what I didn’t know. It’s what I did know. How to watch your back at all times. What a hooker means by “fun” and an asshole means by “discipline” and a caseworker means by “We’re working on it.” And money. Christ. Watching these kids pull it out of their pockets in fistfuls of fives or ones or tens, holding out the whole wad for the lunch lady to pick through, like they don’t know the difference. Or don’t care.

wondered how it would feel to like who you are,

Certain pitiful souls around here see whiteness as their last asset that hasn’t been totaled or repossessed.

The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Still Life by Sarah Winman

  

Our Rating 4.5⭐s

You can buy "Still Life"...here

You can find out about the author...here

• The Blurb...

1944, Italy. As bombs fall around them, two strangers meet in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa and share an extraordinary evening.

Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner a 64-year-old art historian living life on her own terms. She has come to salvage paintings from the wreckage of war and relive memories of her youth when her heart was stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. Ulysses’ chance encounter with Evelyn will transform his life – and all those who love him back home in London – forever.

Uplifting, sweeping and full of unforgettable characters, Still Life is a novel about beauty, love, family and friendship.

• Our Review...

This is a very different book for me to read, totally not of my usual fare. I normally go in for twisty plots, thrilling chase to a climatic end and a denouement of the arch villain. This book isn't like that. It is akin to a family saga (although the protagonists are mostly unrelated) that covers roughly 75 years from about 1900 on. It does so in two stages 1945 to 75ish and the last part of the book relates to Evelyn remembering her early twenties.

Evelyn and Ulysses cross paths during the war and the story follows them as they weave their way through the subsequent years until they both end up where they first met in Florence, birth place of the Renaissance. Indeed Florence is as much a presence in this book as any of the characters. It and its art and its architecture and its soul are intertwined in every chapter. You would do well to keep a phone or PC next to you when reading this book to look up the numerous works of art and areas of the city that are constantly mentioned throughout. I only did this towards the end of the novel and wished I had started doing so earlier.

So the author clearly has a huge passion for both Florence and the appreciation of art. The love of art in this narrative is borderline obsessive with a sprinkle of pretentiousness. hence the 4.5 instead of 5 stars. Maybe I am a bit too basic in my outlook. I think art is a pleasure in life, this novel puts art on a level with love as being one of the vital drivers of life which is a little bit of a reach for me. I suppose the pursuit of art becomes more of a priority if you don't have to think about where your next meal, or the payment for the roof over your head is coming from. This is not a criticism, it is just my lived experience. 

The decades long soap opera of a story follows the working class found family of Ulysses in London's East End and the life and loves of Evelyn a teacher and art lover from a very privileged background, who comes across many famous artists and authors including a young E.M. Forster. The cast is wide and deep including a very wise old man, who doesn't really know how wise he is, a love interest who is hard as nails and a heartbreaker and the most intelligent and linguistically gifted parrot in the whole of literature. Life happens to them all. Lifelong unrequited love, coming of age, loss, friendship, good luck, bad luck and serendipity. Fortunes are never too good nor too bad but a little of both and at often at the same time. From the book I think the lesson is it matters not what tribulations may come it is how we face them that is of more importance. And the best way to do this is with friends and above all kindness. What can I say, I like books with a moral compass.

However, where this book towers above the herd is how the author delivers the big poignant moments in life. You don't read this book, you feel it. It'll make you double cry, tears of both happiness and despair.  There are times in life e.g. when your father passes away or when you hold your grandchild in your arms for the first time, when time stops, and you connect with...with well everything and the author conveys these many moments in this novel. The sweet sadness of life and the sad sweetness of death tear on the threads in your emotions. It feels as if you are living the opening scene of Disney's "Up" or that scene from Jon Voight's "The Champ." It is amazing to think that just looking at words in a book can induce such wild emotions in the reader. It really is a kind of magic or legal drug dealing. Sarah Winman should change her name to Houdini Escobar. Wow.. just wow.

• Selected Quotes...

The man was a dreamer, he said. Had a loser’s luck and a winning smile and was never happy unless he had a churn in his guts that denoted money riding on an outcome. A feeling he often equated to love.

We like beauty, don’t we? Something good on the eye cheers us. Does something to us on a cellular level, makes us feel alive and enriched. Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgement. Captures forever that which is fleeting.

She’s gone up in the world. Typist. Sixty words a minute and that’s just her gob.

You’re a good mum, Peg. No I’m not but it’s good of you to say. Your mum was a good mum, Temps. That’s what a good mum is. Mine was competition.

Her beauty had been her currency. Always had been. No one talked about when the bank ran dry as it inevitably would.

We shall be at war one day with your European brothers, as you call them, Mr Collins. It’s inevitable, said Mr Lugg. They’re not like us. But they want what we have. And do we not want what they have, Mr Lugg? Michelangelo? Dante? Beauty? Wine on a sun-drenched terrace? Villas nestled in the hills going for a song? Mr Lugg ignored Mr Collins and reached for a plate of stinking goat’s cheese. Yes, but will you fight? said the reverend, bringing the conversation back to British imperialism. It’s a simple question. For what cause? said Mr Collins. Cause is irrelevant. Cause is not irrelevant. To teach another nation a lesson, then, said the reverend. A nation is not a person. And so I will not.

• If You Liked This You May Like...

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

 

      Sarah Winman author of Still Life

Devolution by Max Brooks

 

Rating 3.5⭐s

You can buy Devolution...Here

You can find out more about the author Max Brooks...Here

• The Blurb...

As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier's eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now.

But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town's bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing - and too earth-shattering in its implications - to be forgotten.

Kate's is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity's defiance in the face of a terrible predator's gaze, and inevitably, of savagery and death.

Yet it is also far more than that.

Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us - and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity.

Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it - and like none you've ever read before.

• Our Review...

To our readers in the UK this novel is not about the domestic politics of the Celtic countries of the UK (thank goodness!) It is about the opposite of evolution i.e. the notion that species can revert to supposedly more primitive forms over time. 

Our story is told in epistolary fashion in the form of a recovered journal and notes from interviews. This is a clever framework for this novel as it adds a touch of realism to what is in essence a myth. The method is akin to "filming the Blair Witch Project on a shaky hand held cam." It adds a ring of authenticity.

The scene is set early on. The backdrop is a small, very middle class, eco-friendly community of Greenloop in the wilds of the North-Western USA.  The dynamic within the group is very structured. The smiley, rich, engaging people at the top and the not so rich, not so smiley, not so engaging lower down the totem pole of life. 

However, double disaster strikes. A volcanic eruption cuts off our community with no hope of rescue over the winter and said eruption triggers a migration of starving Bigfoots, or should that be Bigfeet, straight into our cotton wool enclosed bunch of softees. 

This part reminded me of the first half of Jaws where power resided with mayor and his politically focused actions but when the shit hits the fan, the most powerful person in the town is the crazy mad bastard fisherman. Human hierarchies are irrelevant when faced with death on a large scale. When that happens we need warriors not wordsmiths.

 

The changing dynamics within the human group under duress were the hook for this book. At times it didn't really matter what the external threat was. As for the external threat., the author is renowned for his work in the zombie genre and has even lectured to the USA military  on unthinkable threats. Could this book have been better if a more credible threat eg wolves, bears been the looming enemy. Possibly, possibly not. So does Kate (our journal author) survive the Bigfeet feeding frenzy? I will say the outcome for Kate is unusual...

This is a fascinating cautionary tale about nature and how we have cocooned ourselves from it. We have lulled ourselves into a false sense of superiority and security. The author suggests that not being content with placing a barrier between us and nature, we have taken the ultimate step and actually forgotten that nature is dangerous and terrifying. 

• Selected Quotes...

You can’t ask people to give up personal, tangible comforts for some ethereal ideal. That’s why communism failed. That’s why all those primitive, hippie, “back to the land” communes failed. Selfless suffering feels good for short crusades, but as a way of life, it’s unsustainable.

It’s great to live free of the other sheep until you hear the wolves howl.

Siri, what can I eat here?” I don’t know what made me feel worse, that I suddenly didn’t have the world’s knowledge in my pocket or that up until that moment, I’d always assumed I was entitled to it.

Injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you. That’s why most weapons of war are designed to injure instead of kill. Wounded are more of a drain than the dead.

Like a tree in the forest, America doesn’t hear foreign suffering.”

They all want to live “in harmony with nature” before some of them realize, too late, that nature is anything but harmonious.

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

Jaws by Peter Benchley

Alien by Alan Dean Foster

Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham

• About the Author...

As a best-selling author, Max Brooks is credited with helping propel zombie-lore from niche sub-culture fascination to mainstream pop-culture obsession. While Brooks has published three massively successful zombie-themed books—The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z, and The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks (all of which are now considered the definitive tomes for the genre)—Brooks’ ultimate goal was to challenge old ways of thinking and encourage mental agility and flexibility for problem solvers and leaders.  Brooks’ unique, unconventional thinking depicted in his books has even inspired the U.S. military to examine how they may respond to potential crises in the future.  World War Z was read and discussed by the sitting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Brooks has been invited to speak at a variety of military engagements—from the Naval War College, to the FEMA hurricane drill at San Antonio, to the nuclear "Vibrant Response" wargame. Adapting to adversity has been the enduring theme in all of Brook’s works. From the true story “The Harlem Hellfighters” which chronicles the heroic African American unit in the trenches of World War 1, to the fiction “Minecraft: The Island” the first official novelization of the 100,000,000+ videogame franchise, Brooks continues to explore what drives us to succeed in a hostile world. His new comic book, “Germ Warfare: A Graphic History” tells the long, painful story of humanities’ battle with microbes, and how those microbes have been used to battle each other. Today, Brooks balances his work as a novelist and speaker with his dual fellowships at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the Modern War Institute at West Point. As an analyst and columnist, Brooks has written about national security subjects such as automation, weapons procurement, and cyber-warfare just to name a few. Together with his colleagues from the MWI, Brooks has co-edited two books on teaching military science through science fiction: “Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict” and “Winning Westeros: How Game of Thrones Explains Modern Military Conflict”.

What Happened To Evie Del Rio

 

Rating...3.5⭐

361 pages

You can buy "What Happened To Evie Del Rio"...Here

You can follow Sarah Watts on "X" at @SKWattsWrites

• The Blurb...

Evie Del Rio was the one, as far as Ed Nash was concerned.
Growing up in the 80's, their teenage love was the inspiration for his song 'Used to Be' and helped Ed's indie band, The Mountaineers, to international fame.
But when Evie and her family suddenly up sticks and leave their London home without a forwarding address, she leaves a heartbroken Ed behind too.
Over thirty years later, washed up rocker Ed is suddenly back in the limelight when Evie's love song is used as the theme tune for a new TV drama. Once the song is later featured on TV documentary 'Musical Muses: The Girl in the Song' it's suddenly not just Ed who's asking...
What happened to Evie Del Rio?

• Our Review...

I have undertaken this review as part of the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. See link

This week's prompt was a book from at least 4 differing view points.

Let me start this review by saying that the beauty of following a challenge like this is that it takes the reader out of their comfort genre. I was definitely out my lane reading this novel. I am an ex rugby playing 56 year old steelworker so really am not the target audience for a generational, middle class, family melodrama.

However, I did enjoy this well told tale. It could have been very confusing with numerous viewpoints and two of the main characters even changing their names. The author keeps control by dedicating each chapter to a different person and the name of that person is the chapter title. Simple but effective. 

Evie was a teenage wild child following a local band, and falling for the charismatic but dangerous lead singer. The lead singer is infatuated with her too and even writes a catchy tune about her. Suddenly one day Evie's family up sticks and move without any warning. Years later the song is a hit and the paparazzi fuelled by the lead singer are on a quest to find out all about what the teenage temptress is up to now. However Evie is now a respectable married woman with teenage kids of her and a dark secret...

A thoughtful piece about destiny, family and the shifting sands of love over 30 years. It's very hard to talk about the main theme of this book without giving a spoiler. The author unfolds the narrative at a perfect pace. Always leaving the reader wondering what the next mini crisis will bring to Evie's life.

• Selected Quotes...

I, on the other hand, can’t believe that Mum never told us about the song. I mean, how cool must it be that someone was so completely in love with you that they wrote a song about you? It’s like having your own “Wonderwall” moment.

I remember him telling me that all the songs he’d written about me would one day make him famous, and I suppose he was right. Although unfortunately they’ve also made me somewhat infamous,

We didn’t know about real life back then. Everything was about the next big thrill— where the next drink, smoke or shag was coming from. It was all- consuming, but it felt so real at the time.

Every step of dating someone and every situation you watch them experience shows what sort of person they are.

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

The Memory by Judith Barrow. click here for review

The Dream Home by TM Logan

One Christmas Eve by Shari Low

• About The Author...

I've always enjoyed the written word and I have a great passion for music so I decided to put the two together and the result is my debut novel 'What Happened to Evie Del Rio?'

I like to think I'm enjoying my 'middle youth' rather than my 'middle age'. I'm married and Mum to two sons and a black rescue cat called Hector.

I enjoy going to gigs and discovering new music. I also love reading women's fiction but I do have a bit of a penchant for crime and psychological thrillers! If I'm not on social media, reading or listening to music then you will probably find me on a football pitch cheering on my youngest son and his team.

The Trial by Franz Kafka

 

You can buy The Trial...Here

• The Blurb...

A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis--an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door--becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral.

• Our Review...

Probably Kafka's most famous novel. I'll be honest, I was looking forward to reading this one as part of the 52 book club challenge under the prompt an author "everyone" has read except you. Click here for link.  But it's just that it was a bit of a slog. It's just well a bit dull and monotonous. 

And I get it I really do. His writing created the adjective "Kafaesque."  It's about how we are all ground down by the deadly excrement of capitalism, namely bureaucracy. It takes a little bit of you away at every frustrating, mundane encounter. As Hannah Arendt famously called it "Tyranny without a tyrant." It's as much in effect today as when Kafka was describing 100 yrs ago. Red tape must have been relatively new then. It feels much worse today. Two coincidences put me in mind of Kafka this week. Firstly my wife's efforts to attempt to get an appointment with a doctor. This involved numerous phone calls, 46 people in a phone cue, auto responses, call backs etc. Secondly this week we saw Mr Bates and the Post Office. Horrific and heartbreaking and in many ways very similar to Kafka's trial.

How can you get a reader to feel the nameless banality of sitting, waiting, being accused of a crime but not knowing what crime, when it occured or against whom. Then living with it everyday, jumping through hoops never making progress in an endless loop. Perhaps you can only deliver it if the writing is mundane, non-signfigant and endlessly looping.

I think there are two parts to this novel. Part A It does an outstanding job in understanding the nature of over-bureaucracy and the crushing insignificance we can feel when we come up against it.

However to achieve part A, Part B, the narrative, has to make one feel as if nothing is happening and everything is repetitive. I don't think I'll be looking for any Kafka anytime soon.

• Selected Quotes...

Our authorities as far as I know, and I only know the lowest grades, don’t go out looking for guilt among the public; it’s the guilt that draws them out, like it says in the law, and they have to send us police officers out. That’s the law. Where d’you think there’d be any mistake there?” “I don’t know this law,” said K. “So much the worse for you, then,” said the policeman. “It’s probably exists only in your heads,” said K.,

he admits he doesn’t know the law and at the same time insists he’s innocent.”

an organisation that employs policemen who can be bribed, oafish supervisors and judges of whom nothing better can be said than that they are not as arrogant as some others. This organisation even maintains a high-level judiciary along with its train of countless servants, scribes, policemen and all the other assistance that it needs, perhaps even executioners and torturers—I’m not afraid of using those words. And what, gentlemen, is the purpose of this enormous organisation. Its purpose is to arrest innocent people and wage pointless prosecutions against them

In fact, defence is not really allowed under the law, it’s only tolerated,

He thought of the flies that tear their legs off struggling to get free of the flypaper.

• If You Liked This Then You May Like..

Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Nausea by John Paul Satre

• About the Author...

Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883 – June 3, 1924) was one of the major German language novelists and short story writers of the twentieth century, whose unique body of writing—much of it incomplete and published posthumously despite his wish that it be destroyed—has become iconic in Western literature.

His most famous pieces of writing include his short story Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) and his two novels, Der Prozess (The Trial) and the unfinished novel Das Schloß (The Castle). Kafka's work expresses the essential absurdity of modern society, especially the impersonal nature of bureaucracy and capitalism. The individual in Kafka's texts is alone and at odds with the society around him, which seems to operate in a secretive manner that the individual cannot understand. Kafka's world is one in which God is dead and the individual is "on trial," as the name of his most famous novel suggests. It is a world devoid of meaning or purpose other than to clear one's name of the nebulous sense of guilt that pervades the atmosphere. The adjective "Kafkaesque" has come into common use to denote mundane yet absurd and surreal circumstances of the kind commonly found in Kafka's work.

Kafka's work represents an extreme example of the modern concern with the individual's place in society. As modernity displaced people from traditional society's fixed meanings and family networks, Kafka exposes the emptiness and even perniciousness of a world in which meaning is not only absent, but malevolent toward the individual. Lacking a transcendent source of value, society is not a hospitable place and meaning is menacing.

from newworldencyclopedia.org

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson

 

You can buy Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas... Here

You can find out more about Hunter S Thompson...Here (Rolling Stone aricle)

This review is by Owen Powell 

• The Blurb...

Roaring down the desert highway, Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo are seeking out the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, they confront casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans, in surreal, chemically enhanced encounters.

Hilarious, hallucinogenic and subversive, Hunter S. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical novel is a cult classic and a masterpiece of gonzo journalism.

• Our Review...

This book is mad. I don’t think there’s another word that can accurately describe it. Imagine some strange man has cornered you in the pub and is regaling some insane drug-fuelled story of his past. That’s essentially what this book is. You’re trapped, subject to this utterly insane tale, and yet, you find yourself needing to know what happens next.

The writing is very fast-paced, which I found to be a welcome change compared to reading most other books. Each sentence is a brand new thought, almost as if we’re watching our main protagonist’s thoughts working, and spiralling, in real time. This writing style perfectly conveys the paranoia and chaos of the heavily intoxicated mind (I imagine) The obstacles Raoul Duke and his attorney face are objectively minor setbacks, and yet they are made urgent and catastrophic through their hallucinatory lenses, which is very entertaining to read. The fast writing and jargon can prove a little overwhelming at times, but it also immerses you completely into the twisted mind of a heavy drug user.

There is little of an actual story to speak of here. Our protagonists are sent to Las Vegas to cover a famous motorcycle race with a convertible full of drugs and alcohol. That’s it. But their exaggerated reactions to otherwise mundane events is what makes this book so special. They will ALWAYS assume the worst case scenario playing out ahead of them, which forces them to act in a way to try and avoid it, thereby just making things worse for themselves. Likewise there isn’t much to the characters either, other than they love getting incredibly high, hate all the downsides that come with it, and are extremely paranoid about everything. Our main protagonist, Raoul Duke, seems to repeat the question “Why not?” throughout this story, which I think also accurately sums him up as a person. Despite the many hallucinatory terrors they face, all these people want to do is chase pleasure, and they’ll stop at nothing to get it. Neither of the protagonists are very respectable or even likeable, and yet, because of this, they are. They clearly care for each other as friends, and also hate each other’s guts as enemies, providing yet another entertaining element to this book.

There are moments, however, when our protagonist stops regaling the events of this story to explain his interpretation of the context of the time and place. Whilst this may work for some people, I thought it brought the story to a grinding halt whenever it occurred.

Overall, despite there being little to the story and characters, I found Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to be both extremely entertaining and (ironically) very addictive. Once i thought I was going to stop reading, I couldn’t. This book sinks its hooks into you and before you know it, you’re in for this crazy ride too. 

• Selected Quotes...

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

“Hallucinations are bad enough. But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing.”

“Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

On The Road by Jack Kerouac

Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

• About The Author...

Hunter S. Thompson, in full Hunter Stockton Thompson, (born July 18, 1937, Louiseville Kentucky, U.S.—died February 20, 2005, Woody Creek, Colorado), American journalist and author who created the genre known as gonzo journalism, a highly personal style of reporting that made Thompson a counterculture icon.

Thompson, who had a number of run-ins with the law as a young man, joined the U.S. Air Force in 1956. He served as a sports editor for a base newspaper and continued his journalsim career after being discharged in 1957. In the following years he also wrote two autobiographical novels, but both were initially rejected by publishing houses; The Rum Diary eventually saw publication in 1998 (film 2011). In 1965 Thompson infiltrated the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, an experience he recounted in Hells Angels (1967). The book led to writing assignments for Esquire, Harpers, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. In addition to his irreverent political and cultural critiscm, Thompson also began to attract attention for his larger-than-life persona, which was highlighted by drug- and alcohol-fueled adventures and a distaste for authority.

In 1970 Thompson introduced his subjective style of reporting with the article “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” in which he was a central part of the story. A 1971 assignment for Sports Illustrated to cover a motorcycle race in Nevada resulted in perhaps his best-known work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which became a contemporary classic and established the genre of gonzo journalism. First serialized in  Rolling Stone in 1971, it documents the drug-addled road trip taken by Thompson (as his alter ego Raoul Duke) and his lawyer (Dr. Gonzo) while also discussing the end of the 1960s counterculture. The book featured frenetic artwork by Ralph Steadman, who illustrated many of Thompson’s works. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was adapted as a 1998 directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Torro.

(From Brittanica.com)

Cove by Cynan Jones

 

112 Pages

You can buy "Cove"...Here

You can follow Cynan Jones...Here

• The Blurb...

Out at sea, in a sudden storm, a man is struck by lightning. When he wakes, injured and adrift on a kayak, his memory of who he is and how he came to be there is all but shattered. Now he must pit himself against the pain and rely on his instincts to get back to shore, and to the woman he dimly senses waiting for his return. With its taut narrative and its wincingly visceral portrait of a man locked in an uneven struggle with the forces of nature, this is a powerful new work from one of the most distinctive voices in British fiction.

• Our Review..

This is a beautifully written short story. The plot is minimal. i.e man on kayak at sea gets struck by lightning, tries to make it back to shore. Clearly inspired by The Old Man and The Sea. But the description of this simple plot is exceptional. It feels akin to an academic exercise in literal descriptive techniques.

First of all, after the lightning strike, the author splits the narrative into two parts. The physical battle for survival and the attempt to rescue his mental capabilities. After the lightning strike as well as the bodily injuries, his memory has been wiped. All he is left with are the instinct to survive and the merest hint of a ghost of a memory of a woman.

The writing format is short separated sentences or paragraphs so that you are hit with point after point in rapid succession. It's like being machine gunned.

The prose however is not straight forward and simple. It is lyrical and opaque. It has numerous similes and metaphors, which I love. It makes the reader work. The reader has to decide whether the sentence is real or imagined or even symbolic. The writing style is much more to the Dylan Thomas end of the writing scale than say Cormac McCarthy.

Which brings me to another point. I began reading this in my usual way, quickly and business like but the writing is just so rich and poetic that I found myself slowing down, savouring every word and reading aloud to feel the rhythms. 

Why then only 3 stars? I'm afraid the end let it down a little for me. It just seemed to happen abruptly and a little to ambiguously. I just don't like the endings to be even a little open to interpretation. 

All in all a visceral, descriptive short story about how fleeting life in physical and spiritual form can be.

 

• Selected Quotes..

"He let the light in bit by bit, as if sipping it with his eye,"

"The smell of the jumper triggers something, but it is like a piano key hitting strings that are gone."

"He saw beneath him a flock of jellyfish, like negligees."

"If you disappear you will grow into a myth for them. You will exist only as absence. If you get back, you will exist as a legend."

"He had a sense, out here, of peace. He could feel not only the proximity of the bay but a proximity to himself. He thought: Why do we stop doing the things we enjoy and the things we know are good for us?"

• If You Like This Then You May Like...

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (for poetic type prose)

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

• About The Author...

Cynan Jones was born in 1975 near Aberaeron, Wales where he now lives and works. He is the author of five short novels, The Long Dry, Everything I Found on the Beach, Bird, Blood, Snow, The Dig, and Cove.

 

He has been longlisted and shortlisted for numerous prizes and won a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award 2007, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2014, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2015 and the BBC National Short Story Award 2017.

 

His work has been published in more than twenty countries, and short stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4 and in a number of anthologies and publications including Granta Magazine and The New Yorker. He also wrote the screenplay for an episode of the BAFTA-winning crime series Hinterland, and Three Tales, a collection of stories for children.

 

Cynan Jones was the 2008 Scritture Giovani Hay Festival Fellow, has tutored extensively for Literature Wales, the Arvon Foundation, and other writing bodies, and wrote and presents CBC's online Writing Short Stories course. For a number of years he was the RLF Writing Fellow at Aberystwyth University and in 2019 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

 

His latest work, available now from Granta books, is Stillicide, a collection of twelve stories commissioned by BBC Radio 4 that aired over the summer 2019. 

(from cynanjones.com)