Reviews

These New Jersey kids have it all: rage, poverty, depression, paranoia, violent sex, cheap booze, mental hospitals, nihilism, street drugs, suicide. It's an American nightmare set to a blaring punk-and-thrash soundtrack. What are their prospects: ``Nothing had come since high school and . . . nothing would come of the years ahead.'' What about their parents: ``Lower down, Ruthie loved disaster.'' Not deeper down, just lower. Work is a trap, family a sick joke, and not even fantasy brings relief: ``Fantasies are like ideals. . . . Close in on them and they move. Further out, mostly.'' Unlike Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho ( LJ 1/91) and similar rolls in the sleaze, this book is well and subtly written. You may not initially identify with these folks, but you learn just how they feel, why they try to escape, and why running solves nothing. In the end, can there be any hope that a cynical heavy metal bimbo and a fragile former mental patient will help each other turn their lives around? Well, maybe. This winner of Pushcart's Tenth Annual Editors' Book Award is very powerful. Highly recommended.-- Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. at Chico