1997 ∙ Rick Moody ∙ 374 pgs
This book should come with a warning to stay away from razor blades, open windows and stores of narcotics. Trust me, you’ll want to head straight for the bottle after reading this thing. There is nothing happy, nothing uplifting, nothing even remotely hopeful about this book. It is all gloom and depression. It is The Ice Storm on downers. It is a story about a fucked up mess of a man who must come home to take care of his invalid mother when her husband of twenty years decides he can’t take it any more. This drunk, puddle of a son cannot even handle one night’s responsibility. He can’t string together two hours without completely destroying something. His mother wants to die, and he can’t even accomplish that correctly. Mix in a leaking nuclear reactor, several mentions of defecation and urination, and you have what amounts to a pretty downcast book. Despite all of this, I enjoyed the book. Moody really knows how to draw a character. You can feel the pain as they stumble through scene after scene of disastrous trauma. Once again, I’m too stupid to understand the underlying meaning in this story, but I certainly got the feeling something sad and co-dependent was going on
