Till the Wheels Fall Off
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From roller rinks and record players to coin-operated condom dispensers and small-town mobsters, Till the Wheels Fall Off is a novel about an unconventional childhood among the pleasures and privations of the pre-digital era.
It’s the late 1980s, and Matthew Carnap is awake most nights, afflicted by a potent combination of insomnia and undiagnosed ADHD. Sometimes he gazes out his bedroom window into the dark; sometimes he wanders the streets of his small southern Minnesota town. But more often than not, he crosses the hall into his stepfather Russ’s roller rink to spend the sleepless hours lost in music. Russ’s record collection is as eclectic as it is extensive, and he and Matthew bond over discovering new tunes and spinning perfect skate mixes. Then Matthew’s mother divorces Russ; they move; the roller rink closes; the twenty-first century arrives. Years later, an isolated, restless Matthew moves back to his hometown. From an unusual apartment in the pressbox of the high school football stadium, he searches his memories, looking for something that might reconnect him with Russ.
With humor and empathy, Brad Zellar (House of Coates) returns with a discursive, lo-fi novel about rural Midwestern life, nostalgia, neurodiversity, masculinity, and family—with a built-in soundtrack.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zellar (House of Coats) spins a thoughtful meditation on the intersections of analog and digital as a 20-something man explores his family history and decaying Midwestern hometown in 1999. After high school, Matthew Carnap works for his uncles on the "Rubber Route," which involves servicing condom machines in the region's bars and truck stops. A briefly successful attempt to strike out on his own lands him a music writer job for an alt weekly in Minneapolis, though he grows tired of the scene's derivative music and his own derivative writing, and nostalgic for records by the region's classic rock and funk performers introduced to him by his stepfather Russ in the mid-'80s, back when Russ was married to his mother and running a roller rink in Matthew's hometown of Prentice. It's the memories of Russ, in part, that draw him back to Prentice, hoping to reconnect with Russ. Matthew also offers a glimpse of living with attention deficit disorder ("You can't focus on any one thing, so you're bored and frustrated all the time"). Though a dearth of dramatic scenes makes for slow going, Zellar's lyrical descriptions of music and roller-skating are consistently effective. This affectionate and endearing trip down memory lane is sure to resonate with readers.
