Twenty three year old Wayne Fencer narrates events of the last year (2000) following the news that his former girl friend Amanda committed suicide, a year in which he struggles to come to terms with the tragedy and his conscience. It is an ordeal made all the more difficult as he learns from Amada’s friends that she was pregnant by him. Wayne embarks on an odyssey that will occupy him for that next year which take him to Mexico, Cuba and a marathon trek along the Appalachians; somehow he hopes to find some answers.

This is well a written novel which follows an interesting format in which the narrative is frequently interspersed with factual snippets and relevant word definitions; a device which at times I felt interrupted the flow of the story unnecessarily. Sometimes the facts spill over into the narrative when real people or events are woven into the story.

However I was left wondering for some time where this story was going, and if I had not consulted the blurb on the back cover would probably have been wondering even longer, for initially it seems to lack any positive direction. It was not a story which gripped me, and I think the frequent digressions into the realms of fact did not help. Wayne is a likeable enough character, caring and unassuming; but the whole story hangs on him, other characters do not play significant roles, or if they do there are only there briefly.

Film buffs may well enjoy it for the frequent references to the world of the cinema; Wayne is a graduate of The University of Colorado where he attended film school. However while it proved to be a pleasant enough read it is not a book I would go out of my way for. ( )

I've always been fascinated by American bildungsroman for one reason - despite a lifelong fascination with American culture I've never really 'got' them. I can understand the why and how but I've never connected with them, perhaps because I've grown up in the superficially similar but actually drastically different UK culture - maybe it's just that I never enjoyed Catcher in the Rye and that put me off completely. Maybe it's that I suspect most of them of being thinly veiled autobiography or wish fulfilment. Or maybe it's that I usually find these narrators as solipsistic at the start as they were at the end, defeating the point really. Similarly, I've never been particularly enamoured of road novels in general - again, a big part of American culture but something that doesn't play as significant a role in a relatively small country.

This book's essentially a tale of the year in a life of Wayne Fencer following the suicide of an ex-girlfriend. Her suicide and the revelation she aborted his child shakes him up and causes him to re-evaluate his life over the course of a year, doing the modern equivalent of dropping out. It's the story of how he comes to terms with her death and the existential aimlessness of those who come out of the top end of the educational system without a clear idea of where to go next. In keeping with the narrator's state of mind, it's often fragmented and disjointed, searching for meaning. To enhance that point it starts with a series of often contradictary quotes and often resorts to dictionary definitions relating to situations in the text, demonstrating that they don't always demonstrate the full meaning of any situation. The point of the novel seemed to be that we can only understand the world or make it mean anything from our own perspective - only we can answer the eternal question of what life means, since meaning is different for everyone. Trouble is that isn't really a satisfying conclusion to a novel, but then the point really lies in the journey, and that goes ever on meaning that the ending seems slightly arbitrary with the initial situation not truly resolved (although it's clear he's made progress on this).

Grappling with a fairly heavyweight question might make it sound like hard going; it isn't. Listi's adopted style is eminently readable and the short chapters, while emphasising the narrator's magpie state of mind, make it a quick read even for those with the titular mental condition.

I couldn't escape that same feeling I've always had with the American bildungsroman though, it's almost a modern native ritual that was never particularly relevant to me culturally. It's an interesting insight into that culture but never really went beyond interesting into gripping. It's a fine debut from Listi, albeit one that covers well worn ground, and now his mandatory rites of passage novel is out of the way I'm interested to see where he goes next. ( )

I received this book through Early Reviewers. It took a a good while to arrive.

I really struggled with this book - it was very bitty and made me feel a bit like I had ADD!! In the end I gave up on it! ( )

Very good for a first attempt. I'll put a proper review here soon.

*and here it is*

Yes. Very good. I actually found it very easy reading which makes a change as I don't have much concentration at the moment. Maybe the choppy style and short chapters suits my short attention span. It's a book about a character who has just left uni and is trying to figure out where his life is going, doing dead-end jobs and killing time before he works out where he's going. Then his ex, who it later turns out was expecting his baby, commits suicide. The rest of the book is about his journey to make sense of this event and also make sense of where his life is going. In a sense the story is not really a story, it's just about someone working some stuff out about their life. We've all been there which I think is where the book's appeal lies - it's about identifying with a character. I think new authors often struggle to draw believable characters but this guy pretty much nailed it in this one. The lead is not glamorised. He has the same frailties and doubts that I'm sure we all suffer from. When he does ecstasy for the first time the people that he's with all look brilliant to him but later on the comedown it all loses it's shine. These are examples of how the character is realistic. In the end there are no real answers or happy endings but the character has changed - grown up a bit - in the time that the book covers. I'll definitely be looking out for this author in the future. ( )

The story of a man trying to figure out who he is and how much he wants to be connected to his past.

The book takes numerous tangents, often brief dictionary definitions, and occasionally longer detours, all of which are fascinating, and don't, I believe, detract from the book as a whole. ( )