Last Night at the Disco
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
" I may have ended up more notorious than famous, but make no mistake: long before Aura Lockhart began commodifying her feminist rage ballads, I was the best-known person to come out of Keyhole, New Jersey." In 1977, twenty-six-year-old Lynda Boyle is desperate for fame and a way out of New Jersey. After failing to make her mark as an East Village poet and rubbing elbows with stars at Studio 54, she discovers a new path to glory through two local musicians, Johnny Engel and Aura Lockhart. Lynda believes she alone can transform them into rock ' n' roll legends. Fast forward four decades: Lynda is in hiding after a series of events force her to flee the tri-state area. When she sees Aura inducting Johnny into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Lynda' s rage ignites. Determined to reclaim her narrative, she sets out to tell her story and secure her rightful place in music history. If she settles a few other scores along the way, that' s just a bonus. Last Night at the Disco is a bold exploration of ambition, fame, and the often messy intersections of friendship and betrayal in the music world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Borders (The Fifty-First State) introduces readers to a deliciously unlikable antihero with an ax to grind in this hilarious novel. Lynda Boyle's story unfolds in an email she sends to Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner in 2019, purportedly to demand corrections to a recent article in which she's mentioned. Gradually, however, the message reveals why she disappeared from her rock 'n' roll life decades earlier. The article is about her old friends, musicians Aura Lockhart and Johnny Engel. Now 67, Lynda met the pair in 1977 as a junior high English teacher in New Jersey, where she'd wound up after failing as a poet in the East Village. She takes Aura, her student, to an open mic night, where they're both captivated by a performance from punk rocker Johnny. His band then rises to fame, thanks in part to Lynda landing them a gig at Studio 54, where she's a regular. After Lynda flees following a drug bust, however, she never sees Aura and Johnny again. The author revels in the irony of Lynda, a manipulative narcissist who constantly reminds Jann of her beauty, often mistaking others' snide reactions as appreciation (to her delight, her former teacher John Ashbery called one of her poems "painfully exact"). Readers will be hooked by this tragicomic romp.
