Train Wreck Girl
a novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“Sean Carswell is a wonderful storyteller. . . . Reading his stuff makes you laugh and makes you think.”—Howard Zinn
“[Carswell’s writing is] the antidote to what is so boring or safe or wrong with modern book publishing.”—Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned
Train Wreck Girl is the funny and tragic story of one man’s quest to figure out what to do with his life now that it’s too late for him to die young.
After finding his girlfriend dead on the railroad tracks right after breaking up with her, Danny McGregor—Flagstaff bartender and surfer without an ocean—rides the next bus out of Arizona, fleeing to his Cocoa Beach, Florida, hometown, where a maelstrom of past ghosts await.
Back in Florida, his treacherous friend, Bart, finds Danny a job picking up corpses. Sophie, a former crazy girlfriend who stabbed Danny, wants to rekindle their relationship. Taylor, a twelve-year-old neighborhood girl, only wants Danny to teach her to surf. And then there’s Helen, with a face that launched a dozen Greyhounds. Through the chaos, Danny discovers his strengths amid all his weaknesses and is able to move forward while making peace with his past.
Sean Carswell is a former carpenter, housepainter, dishwasher, and warehouse clerk. His fiction has appeared in dozens of literary journals. He has been a staff writer for Flipside, Clamor, and Ink 19, and is a regular contributor to Razorcake. A co-founder of Gorsky Press, he is currently a professor at the University of California.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Danny McGregor, the narrator of this thin and underpowered novel, ditches Florida and washes up in Flagstaff, Ariz., where he tends bar at a tumbledown tavern and shacks up in his trailer with red-haired college student Libra. Though Libra's wealthy parents threaten to cut her off, she stays true to her man, but, being a good guy, Danny dumps her so she doesn't screw up her life. Then, as he's walking along the railroad tracks to hop on a Greyhound back to Florida, he comes across her mangled body strewn across the tracks. He doesn't report the death, and as he tries to get his life back together in Florida, he's tailed by a P.I. hired by Libra's parents. He's eventually held to account for Libra, but the novel lacks the emotional depth and severity necessary to support the dark subject matter. The result is a series of shallow and mundane anecdotes that pile up, but don't build.
