Night Train
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Walton tracks the fate of Lily and Charlie, two down–and–out musicians on the run from an army of "very well–connected" thugs out not just for blood but for spirit. Fleeing by car, foot, air, bicycle, train, covered wagon and dirigible, the two make their way with Lily's baby from Sunset Boulevard to a mountain retreat in Oregon. Eluding all manner of physical and mental danger, Lily and Charlie take their final stand with a commune of utopian artists. Their odyssey is seedily realistic, wildly surrealistic, often erotic and only occasionally a bit precious. What seemed like a simple pursuit story has become an engaging parable of the responsibilities of creativity, the nature of self–worth, the redemptive power of love—perhaps the Meaning of Life itself. Night Train evokes a paranoid romanticism reminiscent of Craig Nova, Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon. – Tom Nolan, Los Angeles Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Charlie, who is stoned and driving a stolen car, picks up Lily, who is running down Sunset Boulevard, trying to save herself and her baby from Pearl, a covetous woman of influence and power. The bulk of this rambling tale is taken up with Charlie's and Lily's escapades along the California and Northern Pacific coast as they stay just beyond Pearl's reach. There are murders, drugs and rhapsodic sex as Charlie, a nearly middle-aged carpenter/songwriter, and Lily, an ex-hooker with a singing voice people are willing to kill over, find love and reason for hope in each other. With such suggestions of science fiction (maybe it's just California whimsy) as a turquoise blimp and a city-sized geodesic dome, Walton's new bookhe also wrote Inside Moves and Louie & Womenis reminiscent of earlier sprawling hippie-era novels by Kesey and Pynchon. This one, though, has a veneer of sentimentality and a vagueness of purpose that severely diminish its punch.
