I Read It So You Don’t Have To: Groupies by Sarah Priscus

“Josie, who’d be covered in blood on the bathroom tiles in nine months.”

This is the opening line to the novel Groupies by Sarah Priscus. And with an opening line like that, a total attention grabber, you would think Groupies would be an amazing read. Sadly, the opening line is the only part of this novel that I liked. From that moment, Groupies went severely downhill.

It’s the late 1970s, and main character, Faun Novak, has dropped out of Mount Holyoke and her mother has just died. Feeling a bit directionless, Faun moves out west to California to live with her high school best friend, Josie. Josie has a fledgling modeling career, and is dating Cal Holiday, the lead singer of the rock band Holiday Sun.

Faun quickly gets caught up in the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of being in Holiday Sun’s orbit. She also fancies herself as some type of photographer even though her “art” consists of taking mostly quick snaps with her Polaroid camera. To make some money to fund her rock and roll habit, Faun gets a job at a mall photo studio, but proves to be too lazy to develop any type of work ethic.

Wanting to be a photographer, you would think Faun would try to hone her skills, buy an actual professional SLR camera, study her craft, and learn how to navigate a dark room (remember this was the 1970s; digital photography was a long way off). But no, Faun would rather wing it with her Polaroid camera and somehow believes her amateurish snaps should be taken seriously by the rock and roll press. I seriously doubt magazines like Rolling Stone, Creem, and Circus would talk Faun seriously. But somehow she is considered a serious artiste by Holiday Sun and the local music scene.

There is a lot of drug taking and mindless casual sex in Groupies, but Josie and Cal seem to be a true blue couple. They even get married. But sadly, Cal is abusive towards Josie. And after Faun releases some photos of Josie in a less than favorable light, it leads towards a violent altercation between Josie and Cal, which is why Josie ends up covered in blood. But is it Josie or Cal who dies?

Who cares? By the time Groupies reaches its climax, I just didn’t care. Groupies is completely shallow and sleazy. It’s as if Priscus only watched Almost Famous a few times, and figured she knew everything about the rock and roll scene in 1970s Los Angeles. Yes, she’s a young author; she just graduated from college. But she should have put more research into writing Groupies. She makes no mention of the rising punk scene, and disco was a brief mention when she name drops Studio 54. Plus, I can assure you there were no Vietnam war protests or women wearing mini-skirts in the late 1970s. Believe me, I was there.

Plus, Faun is a charisma-free character who you can never root for, and she shows no growth throughout the novel. And it’s disgusting how she betrays Josie. Sure, I can understand the rock and roll excess of the 1970s, but it was never conveyed why Holiday Sun was the type of band people wanted to hang out with. They weren’t exactly the Rolling Stones.

In an age where vinyl is making a comeback, Groupies has all the relevance of a dusty 8-track found in the glove compartment of a Ford Pinto.

I Read It So You Don’t Have To: Pretty Little Dirty by Amanda Boyden

I’m usually a sucker for coming-of-age books, especially those about my fellow Generation X-ers. I was hoping Amanda Boyden’s novel Pretty Little Dirty would appease my love for these types of books. Sadly, this book was a huge disappointment.

Pretty Little Dirty started out promising. Lisa Smith and Celeste Diamond meet as grade schoolers in Kansas City, Missouri. Lisa has just moved from Chicago and Celeste has just moved from New York. Being the new girls in town, they bond immediately and become best friends.

Lisa, who narrates the books, has a bad home life. Her mother is still in the throes of post-partum depression at a time mental illness was barely understood and properly treated. And her father is totally checked out, not there to offer his children support and comfort.

On the other hand, Celeste’s family is picture perfect to young Lisa. Her parents are warm and funny. Lisa finds solace with the Diamond family so much she seems to spend more time with them than with her own family.

Lisa and Celeste bond at summer camp and their friendship continues once they get to high school. These two girls show promise. They take dance classes, get good grades, and sing in the school choir. They also start spending time at the Kansas City Art Institute meeting artsy types. And that’s when Pretty Little Dirty completely goes off the rails.

Lisa and Celeste get heavily into drugs and sleep with a lot of guys. Chapter after chapter is about these two girls ingesting illegal substances and having sex with loser guys. This continues when they go to college-Lisa to the University of Wisconsin and Celeste to Berkeley. It’s just a downward spiral of drugs, bad sex, and hanging out with really sketchy people. They also go to a lot of rock shows but they seem to be more into the scene than the actual music. I was wondering how they could afford their lifestyles. The only source of money these girls had were their parents’ credit cards and dealing drugs.

I’m not prude. Drug use and sex in a novel is not going to make me clutch my pearls. But I’m trying to figure out how two young women with such unrestrained drug use could even make a simple cup of coffee in the morning let alone get really good grades in high school and college. And by the early 1980s AIDS was a huge threat so banging random men without condoms is just so unbelievably stupid. Plus, the sex scenes are so soulless and off putting. And the writing of these sex scenes is gag-inducing, makes sex look so unsexy. And in one passage, Lisa talks about plucking crabs from her pubic hair in the bathroom stall of a club. Hmm, how classy.

Speaking of the writing, it’s repetitive, overwrought, and at times, quite dull. In the hands of a much better writer, Pretty Little Dirty could have been good, but it’s not. And when the book concluded with a tragic yet predictable end, I couldn’t have cared less.

In the end Lisa and Celeste aren’t likable and relatable. Sure, teen girls are going to experiment with drugs and sex, but they also have characteristics that make them compelling and interesting. No amount of sex, drugs, and rock and roll could make Lisa and Celeste compelling and interesting. They are vapid, self-absorbed, not very bright, and aren’t as artsy and bewitching as they think they are. They are also mean girls who make fun of other people’s looks and their racism is barely veiled. Pretty Little Dirty is ugly massive dirty waste of time.

Book Review: Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions by JR Helton

In his memoir, Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions, JR Helton (who goes by the name Jake in the book), visits his younger years in 1980s Austin, Texas. It’s a time of working shitty barely blue collar gigs that are hardly on the fast track to respectability and career success. And it’s also a time when he found himself on a never ending cycle of crappy decisions, which included a bad marriage, toxic friends and family members, drugs and alcohol and educational aspirations cast to the wayside.

Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions begins with Jake dropping out of the University of Texas-Austin to try his hand making it as a writer. Alas, Jake has to give up his writing ambitions and find himself a “real job.” His first job is a soul-sucking job with Austin Paint and Spray, which morphs into other awful painting jobs working with dangerous chemicals and even more dangerous co-workers and shitty bosses. Helton writes about his co-workers in exquisite detail that they spring to life on every page.

Jake’s personal life is also in shambles. He’s married to his high school sweetheart, Susan, but their marriage proves to be more sour if not outright dysfunctional. The only thing these two lovebirds have going for them is a really hot sex life. Whereas, Jake eeks out a living painting, Susan takes on bunch of lowly office jobs, but soon finds her way into Austin’s growing movie production scene where she often has affairs with her co-workers, throwing it back in Jake’s face every chance she gets.

And it doesn’t help that Susan’s parents make for less than ideal in-laws. Her father is a washed-up football star with serious mental health issues and her mother is a faded, has-been actress.

But don’t feel sorry for Jake just yet. He proves to be less than an ideal husband. He’s sullen and misanthropic. His communication skills are almost non-existent. And he spends most of his time with Susan pissed off and has a strangely flirtatious relationship with her mother.

As for his own family? Well, they don’t come across quite some cuddly and lovable either.

And thus Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions goes on-Jake working one bad job after another and making poor decisions, which hound him in his younger years until he finally realizes it’s time to grow up and get it together when it comes to work, education, his substance abuse and to his too long marriage to Susan.

Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions is a memoir that reads like a novel, a bit similar to Ariel Gore’s We Were Witches. It also reminded me of two other memoirs of poverty and blue collar life-Linda Tirado’s Hand to Mouth and Ben Hamper’s Rivethead. It is a book written with true to life characters, a compelling plot and richly-detailed dialogue.

And though Jake is a bit of an anti-hero, he is one you end up rooting for especially once Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions reaches its satisfying end, which of course, you’ll have to read yourself.

 

 

 

Book Review: Nico’s Warriors by Mitchell Nevin

It’s a funny thing. I’m a fan of various televised crime-related shows like “Criminal Minds” and the various Law and Order series, but I’ve never been one to read a lot of crime-related books. But when local author Mitchell Nevin reached out to me to review his book Nico’s Warriors: A Veteran’s Revenge I just knew I had to read it considering it takes place pretty much in my backyard—the city of Milwaukee and its surrounding suburbs.

Nico’s Warriors is about Zak Klatter, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan now back home Wisconsin. Driving home one night after a night of revelry at a local tavern, Zak picks up a duffel bag thrown from a speeding car being chased by the cops. Inside the bag Zak finds something quite interesting and decides the contents might help him in various ways.

But Zak knows he can’t do this alone so he gathers up a rag tag bunch to help him accomplish his mission, many of them his fellow veterans. They decide to rob and fight Milwaukee’s most venomous and deadly drug gangs to some incredibly results that prove to be lethal and ambiguous.

Among Zak’s comrades include Ethan who provides the brain power, Raul, who lost his beloved niece to drug addiction and Xavier, who provides the much-needed tactical expertise. Along for the ride is the idiosyncratic Dwyer.

In the meantime, Zak opens up a tavern (with plenty of help from his father), which he calls The Fallen. The Fallen is dedicated to honoring veterans, firefighters and police officers who have died in the line of duty. Not only does it provide plenty of alcoholic beverages (this is Wisconsin after all) for its patrons, it also offers basic pub food. The Fallen also acts as a quasi-meeting place for Zak and his gang to right the wrongs brought on by Milwaukee’s most nefarious and notorious drug kingpins and drug gangs.

Among Zak’s cunning crew also includes his family, his somewhat girlfriend Mandy and other assorted friends and acquaintances.

Then there are the other characters—fellow veterans and members of the Milwaukee-area law enforcement and other assorted individuals that make up both Zak and the Milwaukee community. Needless to say, Nico’s Warriors also looks into the inner workings of the city’s drug dealing culture, one that is quite chilling but quite fascinating indeed. What I found quite enlightening is how both cultures are not conveyed fully in black and white—both are painted in shadowy shades of gray—showing the good, the bad and the downright ugly in both cultures.

Nico’s Warriors is a fun read that kept me guessing, trying to put together a puzzle of people, places and things. Just when you think things will zig, they zag. Nevin clearly knows the world of crime and law and order, which is conveyed in both the actions and the dialogue of the characters.

Needless to say, I also loved how Nico’s Warriors takes place in Milwaukee and its surrounding suburbs. It names lots of familiar Milwaukee neighborhoods and its city streets, including my very own Farwell Avenue on Milwaukee’s lower east side. I had a bit of a giggle over the name of a radio host Jack Plankinton and his show “Walking the Plank” for Plankinton is an actual street in downtown Milwaukee (it crosses Wisconsin Avenue if you need to know).

Nico’s Warriors ends on a very mysterious note. Zak and his gang don’t quite finish their mission. But don’t fret my readers for a sequel is coming out shortly and this book is part of a trilogy.

Nico’s Warriors does have a few faults. I noticed several spelling and grammatical errors, but nothing that can’t be fixed with the help of more proofreading and of an experienced copy editor.

For the most part Nico’s Warriors: A Veteran’s Revenge is a pretty solid effort for a first time author, and if you’re a fan of the crime genre, you’ll probably enjoy reading this book.