Blithedale Canyon
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Trent Wolfer has blown it, in every possible way, over and over and over. And now he's blowing it again. Fresh out of rehab, he's back in his hometown working a dead-end job at a fast food joint and cutting out on his breaks to sneak airplane bottles of vodka and gin, when he looks up from his register one day to see Suze Randall, his closest friend from high school, now a radiant blonde single mother of two. Set in a small, sun-drenched Northern California town shifting from hippie haven to moneyed paradise, Blithedale Canyon asks whether a man who has spent his whole life screwing up can stop long enough to avoid destroying a woman he loves. Michael Bourne's funny, edgy debut is a literary love story for every man who has ever wondered why he keeps smashing up the things he cares about, and for every woman who's ever wondered what was going on in the head of that guy she spent her twenties trying to fix.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bourne, a reviewer for PW, debuts with an acute and vulnerable expression of male angst set in Mill Valley, Calif. Trent Wolfer, a man in his late 20s, is haunted by a history of poor, debauched decision making. After spending time in prison for embezzling funds from a liquor store, he returns home, picks up a fast food job, and moves back in with his groovy Marin County mother and her wealthy second husband. Meanwhile, Trent struggles with regret, habitual lying, and alcoholism. However, after an encounter with an old flame, he begins to take his life more seriously and shifts over to a job at a wholesome grocery store. Reform and temptation tug at him with equal force, which Bourne conveys with a searing, confessional sincerity. Readers might think of Trent as an older version of Holden Caulfield (according to Trent, everyone in town is "full of shit"), and despite his deeply flawed nature, the more he wobbles and struggles, the more endearing he becomes. This will resonate with readers.
