book review: Back Roads: A Novel
author: Tawni O'Dell
SPOILERS follow!

overall: a decent, easy enough read, well developed characters, twisted plot line and concept.

end opinion: pretty fucked up, and sad, and troubling, and not necessarily in a good, challenging way.

fitness for a book club book*: 5/10... it would stimulate a lot of discussion, and has lots of hard, interesting things to talk about, but it's really not a very good book, and i'm glad i didn't pay for it (it was a library book).
(*why i have this rating: these book reviews are for a good friend who runs the best little bookshop in the country, probably the world, and to whom i am endeavoring to send reviews of books i read.)

how much i liked the book, i.e., am i glad i read it: 3/10. (and most of the 3 out of 10 is because it's good to read recent novels that get a lot of good press, so i know what people are talking about.)

i checked it out because O'Dell has a new book that was on the new releases shelf at my local library. the new, second book is riding on the coattails of the huge commercial success of this book, so i decided to read the one that launched her into the book world limelight before reading the sophomore offering. i'm glad i did: i won't bother with the second book now.

i think the reviewers, including Oprah's book club people, who feted this book, did so because (1) it's a rookie offering that is better than some (though arguably not a majority of) rookie offerings, (2) it has numerous challenging themes (see below), and (3) it's pretty easy to read. sort of. but actually not: it's really quite disturbing, and not in a good, powerful, disturbing-but-powerful way. just disturbing, and often quite gross.

the challenging themes include, but are not limited to: patricide, sibling murder, homicide, child incest, prison life, child abuse, commitment to forensic mental health facilities, adolescent alcoholism, some sort of compulsive sexuality DO, and profound, disabling mental health disorders of all flavors, just to name a few. basically, it's just chock full of fucked up people living in a fucked up place and doing fucked up things to one another, and a few high minded liberals trying to do the "right" thing.

the narrator/main character/antagonist is called on the back cover "a wonderfully touching narrator", and while some reviewers make references to his Holden Caufield-esque qualities, i think he shows a young novelist trying hard to distinguish herself, yet unable to not act out some of her own apparent anger at her upbringing. not only is the 'antagonist' not likeable (even though we're supposed to feel for him, at least, and admire him, at best), he's actually totally despicable. he spends the entire book physically assaulting girls and women, and fantasizing about murdering and battering others, having fairly disgusting sexual fantasies which usually include battering the woman in addition to or instead of "fucking" her, feeling sorry for himself, drinking heavily, and wandering around.

it was an ugly read, actually, given all of the above. and there are numerous plot twists, each of them more audacious than the one before it, and after about the fourth or fifth plot twist, i'm left thinking that it's not surprising that it's a first novel: i feel like a more experienced novelist, and a novelist with an editor who is trying to not stomp on a promising new talent, would have cut out two, or maybe even three, of the zinging plot twists.

a pretty bad book, really. my advice: don't bother.