Book Launch Cafe Book Review
By Michael Shilling
Copyright 2009 by Michael Shilling; Back Bay Books/Little, Brown & Company, 371 pages
(fiction/novel): Coming in January 2009
If guilt, regret, fear, and bad decisions were a rock band, they would be called Blood Orphans.
From the first sentence, Rock Bottom grabbed me with its itchy hands and dragged me on a wild, frightening ride through the last day of the last tour of the failed and humiliated band Blood Orphans. Led by their drummer, Darlo, the only child of a porn king, the rest of the band includes Shane, a former Christian rocker who now quotes Buddha and Jesus in between one-night stands and shots; Adam, the passive dreamer who can play any instrument but is belittled by the band; and Bobby, the everyman who doesn’t really belong and knows it. Along for the funeral procession is their never-say-die, and unfortunately incompetent, manager Joey.
Add regret to the mix, and what awaits the audience is a haunting trip through the past and present of a band that has no future. As the story opens, the band members and their wannabe manager struggle to make it through one more day that will culminate in their one last show. They walk the streets of Amsterdam, awash in drugs, sex, and their own miserable memories, fearing what the morning will bring – and what they know it won’t.
The characters are painfully human and all their fault lines are dangerously shifting under the pressure of failure. At times, this novel is like watching a train wreck; you want to look away but you can’t because it’s horrifically fascinating. On their tour, they find meaningless sex, violence, substance abuse, physical deformities, and despair, and yet – you can’t help rooting for Blood Orphans and their manager. You can’t look away because this is a well-written, well-paced story that explores the seamy side of the music business and the dark night of the soul that makes us scream for the sun to show itself.
Most of us will never be in a real rock band – and after reading this book I’m glad for that – but Rock Bottom lets us all live it vicariously, the excitement, good liquor, bad smells, uncomfortable lodgings, and loneliness. Rock Bottom gives the saying “it’s the journey that matters” a dark and satisfying meaning. Rock on, Blood Orphans!
Purchase at Amazon.com, click on title: Rock Bottom: A Novel
December 4, 2008
The blogger is Cecilia Sepp, an association
management/communications consultant and writer based in Silver Spring,
Maryland. Find out more about her business, CS Association Services, at www.ceciliasepp.net, and read Cecilia’s
blog at www.associationpuzzle.typepad.com.
You can contact Cecilia via email at csassociationservices@ceciliasepp.net.
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