Roadside Bodhisattva
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
You can try to escape from the mundane, or, with the help of Paul Di Filippo, you can take a short, meaningful break from it. In the vein of George Saunders or Michael Chabon, Di Filippo uses the tools of science fiction and the surreal to take a deep, richly felt look at humanity. His brand of funny, quirky, thoughtful, fast‑moving, heart‑warming, brain‑bending stories exists across the entire spectrum of the fantastic, from hard science fiction to satire to fantasy and on to horror, delivering a riotously entertaining string of modern fables and stories from tomorrow, now and anytime. After you read Paul Di Filippo, you will no longer see everyday life quite the same. Di Filippo's Roadside Bodhisattva follows Kid A, a sixteen‑year‑old runaway, as he wanders a path laid out for him by the books of Jack Kerouac and Khalil Gibran. Searching for existential wisdom and something greater than himself, Kid A meets Sid, a veteran of life along the highway, and the two soon land at the Deer Park Kitchen motor lodge. What unfolds in Kid and Sid's interaction with Deer Park's colorful locals is an overwhelming mix of epiphanies and misunderstandings, insights and convictions, hope and betrayal. For Kid A and for all of us, enlightenment can be a rocky road to travel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A few months after 16-year-old Kid A runs away from home, fed up with his Buddhist slacker parents lifestyle, he teams with Sid, a veteran knight of the road, on the outskirts of remote Deer Park, Mass., in Di Filippo s lightweight coming-of-age story. Though the Kid na vely fancies a life of liberty informed by his readings of Jack Kerouac and Khalil Gibran, he puts his dreams on hold when Sid lands them temporary jobs as handymen at the town s motor lodge. Soon, charming Sid is ingratiating himself with the locals, helping them to lead more fulfilling lives, and Kid A finds himself seriously questioning whether to follow Sid s way of negotiating the world. Di Filippo (Harsh Oases) does a fine job of immersing the reader in the thoughts of his inexperienced teen narrator, but his characters are straight out of central casting and all so likable that none generates any conflict. Absent any true dramatic highs or lows, the novel advances on a monotonously even keel to an unearned surprise ending.
