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Original Essays | June 27, 2009

Fran Cannon Slayton: IMG On Wakes and Rum (and Coke)

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"Unfortunately, I've been to my fair share of wakes." Continue »
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Alternative Atlanta

by Marshall Boswell

Alternative Atlanta Cover

ISBN13: 9780385338646
ISBN10: 0385338643
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In a funny, poignant, wonderfully original debut novel, the author of the acclaimed short-story collection Trouble with Girls weaves a beguiling tale of fathers and sons, sons and lovers…and one unforgettable summer in a young man’s life–somewhere between a past he doesn’t understand and a future he’s not ready to live….

ALTERNATIVE ATLANTA

For thirty-year-old Gerald Brinkman, life in Atlanta in the year 1996–the summer of the Olympics–doesn’t feel half bad. Writing reviews of basement rock bands for an alternative paper, Gerald has carefully avoided getting a real job, while watching his old friends from grad school start careers, marriages, and affairs–often with each other. But in this one life-changing summer, something is about to happen that will shake Gerald out of his complacency forever.

Gerald’s father, his brilliant, vagabond, and utterly unhelpful father, wants to come and stay with him “for a while.” Ever since childhood, Gerald has tried to bury his relationship with his father under a life of carefully crafted wrong turns. And now Paul Brinkman has shown up with trash bags full of belongings, a medical crisis, and an unbearable confession to make. But Gerald knows one thing for sure: He doesn’t want to hear it. Try as he might to stop it, the future is bearing down on him. A job is being dangled in New York. A secret from his past is waiting to be revealed. An ex-girlfriend is suddenly sending mixed signals. And in one moment in one summer in the city of Atlanta, everything is about to change forever. When it does, Gerald is going to have a whole new vision of who he is, who his father and friends are, and what he must do next.

An exhilarating and touching novel about family and flirtations, growing up and letting go, Alternative Atlanta brilliantly captures a time of life when everything seems possible and impossible at the same time. It is a work of dazzling storytelling from a writer of immense gifts.

From the Hardcover edition.

Review:

“ALTERNATIVE ATLANTA is a heartfelt and kick-ass funny story that is at its essence, about the pain of growing up--especially when you put it off for a decade or two. Smart and highly readable at the same time, keenly observed in refreshingly original style by Marshall Boswell, the promise of his collection TROUBLE WITH GIRLS is equaled and then some.”

--Elizabeth Crane, author of WHEN THE MESSENGER IS HOT

From the Hardcover edition.

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About the Author

Marshall Boswell's short stories have appeared in magazines from Missouri Review to Playboy, and in New Stories from the South, 2001. TROUBLE WITH GIRLS, his first book, was a Book Sense pick. Boswell lives with his wife and their two children in Memphis, where he teaches American literature at Rhodes College.

From the Hardcover edition.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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OneMansView, March 26, 2009 (view all comments by OneMansView)
Turmoil in the city and in some lives (3.5*s)

Thirty-year-old Gerald Brinkman seems about as ready for life as Atlanta was for the Olympics: a certain amount of hope and promise early on that masked their lack of preparedness for coping with realities. Set in the Olympic summer of 1996 in Atlanta, Brinkman for the last three years, after dropping out of grad school as a lit major, has been drifting on pot smoking and writing about local rock bands for the local alternative newspaper, based on the actual Creative Loafing. But even this tentative and minimal existence is now being assailed as his long-standoffish father has arrived on the steps of his apartment with apparently all of his worldly possessions in a few bags and his ex-girlfriend and fellow grad student Nora is suddenly getting married.

The book follows Gerald as he lurches from one unsettled aspect of his life to another. His aloof, quirky, and intellectual father has arrived seemingly intent on unburdening himself with deeply held secrets, but Gerald can’t get past his father’s withdrawal from real parenting after his mother’s death many years ago. Gerald’s knowledge of rock music is encyclopedic and has even placed him in demand for a job in New York, yet his lack of enthusiasm is quite noticeable. Any conclusiveness that Nora’s marriage could have represented is quickly dispelled as she seeks out Gerald for troubles that begin almost immediately in her marriage. And then there is mutual friend Sasha, a married beauty, who has taken a very keen interest in Gerald.

This book is the anti- perfect childhood, straight through grad school by age twenty-four, and on to a great job book. Not to minimize the difficulties of figuring out what life is all about before one is thirty, these characters, especially Gerald, given their intellectual capabilities, seem overly obtuse, self-destructive, and unable to effectively communicate – Gerald can write but not speak effectively. Most interactions seem to end up in squabbling, followed by a disappearing act. The characters are sympathetic, which keeps the book interesting, but puzzling enough to not be totally believable. At times the misconnections threaten the flow of the book.

Residents and visitors to Atlanta will undoubtedly be taken by the accurate descriptions of the Atlanta landscape: the Philly cheese steak shack on Monroe, Piedmont Park, and Centennial Park - the site of the infamous bombing. The author unnecessarily integrates the practically hysterical search for suspects in the bombing into his story. Given the turmoil and uncertainty in the city and in the lives of the characters, the book ends on a rather pacific, almost predictable, note. A lot of issues disappeared or got better quickly.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780385338646
Author:
Boswell, Marshall
Publisher:
Dial Press
Subject:
General
Subject:
Fathers and sons
Subject:
Atlanta (ga.)
Subject:
Domestic fiction
Publication Date:
March 2006
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
326
Dimensions:
8.18x5.56x.76 in. .57 lbs.
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