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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Some Things That Meant the World to Meby Joshua Mohr
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Enter Damascus, the womb-like bar in San Francisco's Mission District, and you'll find Rhonda, a thirty-year-old man suffering from depersonalization — a disorder allowing him to reconfigure his reality to tolerate trauma. When Rhonda was young he imagined the rooms of his house drifting apart like separating continents as he raced to avoid his mother's abusive boyfriend while trying to make sense of her extended disappearances. The next stool over is Vern, a diaper-clad Vet nursing warm beers, who wishes for nothing more than the opportunity to re-break Rhonda's arm. Beside Vern, Old Lady Rhonda, a neglected housewife who excels at Wheel of Fortune. Some Things That Meant the World to Me is the gritty tale of a band of outcasts struggling to make sense of their broken pasts in this subtly affecting, achingly poignant, and mature debut novel. "I'd like to brag about the night I saved a hooker's life. Like to tell you how quiet everything else in the world was while I helped her. This was in San Francisco. Late 2007. I'd been drinking in Damascus, my favorite dive bar, which was painted entirely black — floor, walls, and ceiling. Being surrounded by all that darkness had this slowing effect on time, like a shunned astronaut meandering in space." Review:"Mohr's first novel is biting and heartbreaking, a piercing look at the indelible scars a violent past has left on a young man named Rhonda. In the mental hospital where Rhonda spent his teenage years, a doctor he refers to as Angel-Hair diagnoses him with depersonalization, a disorder he uses to reconfigure the traumatic events of his life and render them in vividly surreal terms. To withstand the frequent absences of his alcoholic mother and her boyfriend's abuse, Rhonda imagines his childhood home in Arizona as a living thing, where rooms stretch and move, and desert wildlife wanders the halls. The disturbing narrative engine — Rhonda's renaming and reimagining of the world around him to fit into his damaged logic — keeps the story creepily moving as it touches on homebrew prison wine and Rhonda's friendship with his childhood self, little-Rhonda. Mohr uses punchy, tightly wound prose to pull readers into a nightmarish landscape, but he never loses the heart of his story; it's as touching as it is shocking, even if the ending's a smidge sappy." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"Joshua Mohr's scorching, jacked-up prose nearly burned my eyes out; and his main character, a young man known as Rhonda, is one of the most troubled and heartbreaking people you will ever encounter in literature." Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff Review:"This bold new writer has an uncanny gift for tapping our most dangerous desires. Open the trapdoor at the bottom of the dumpster and prepare yourself to enter a wonderland where violence may pave your path to strange love and potent healing." Melanie Rae Thon, author of Sweet Hearts Review:"What Joshua Mohr is doing has more in common with Kafka, Lewis Carroll, and Haruki Murakami, all great chroniclers of the fantastic. He's interested in something weirder than mere sex, drugs, and degradation." Joshua Furst, The Rumpus Review:"In his first novel, Joshua Mohr nearly accomplishes a masterpiece." Grade: A Campus Circle Review:"A startling debut. Joshua Mohr takes us to a different city, but a city we know, populated by the dark side of ourselves." Stephen Elliott Review:"Mohr's prose roams with chimerical liquidity. The magic of this book is a disturbing, hallucinogenic magic, one that will jostle you back and forth..." Boston's Weekly Dig Synopsis:Following a 30-year-old man named Rhonda suffering from depersonalization, Some Things That Meant the World to Me is a gritty and beautiful work that is creative and hypnotic, and should stand as an introduction of an original new voice to American literature. When Rhonda was a child — abandoned and ignored by his mother; abused and misguided by his mother's boyfriend — he imagined the rooms of his home drifting apart from one another like separating continents. Years later, after an embarrassing episode as an adult, Rhonda's inner-child appears, leading him to a trapdoor in the bottom of a dumpster behind a taqueria that will force him to finally confront his troubled past. In the spirit of Cruddy and Hairstyles of the Damned, Joshua Mohr has created a remarkable and unforgettable character in this charmingly poetic and maturely crafted first novel. About the AuthorJoshua Mohr has been published in Other Voices, The Cimarron Review, Pleiades, and Gulf Coast, among others. He sings in the band Damn Handsome and The Birthday Suits. He lives in San Francisco and teaches at a halfway house. His second novel, From a Fragile Galaxy, is forthcoming from Two Dollar Radio in June 2010. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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