Ride

Andrew Lafleches Ride like a sharp new switchblade has a dangerous weight to it. Troy is high risk with sex drugs and crime and hes giving his life the finger. Ride is highway speed and echoes Irvine Welshs Trainspotting. -Gerald Arthur Moore author of Shatter the GlassSet in the early 2000s near St. Catharines ON high school is over an ex-girlfriend is pregnant and Troy Brinkman is spiralling out of control. Having just moved out of his parents home Troy enters a landscape of limitless moral entropy where everybody in his social circles drinks copious amounts of alcohol snorts mountains of cocaine and swallows as many Ecstasy pills as they can get their hands on.When hes not seething for his next high Troy cruises parties strip-clubs and bars for action in a desperate attempt to avoid coming to terms with his best friends attempted suicide. In this binge-life Troy recognizes his impending doom and tries to renew feelings for his ex-girlfriend Danielle his sole through-line that connects Troy to who he was before. Its this struggle which may lead to Troys self-destruction.Ride is the millennials contemporary version of the classic 1960s counterculture novel and readers will catch familiar whiffs of the nihilism and loneliness in the darkest writings of Thompson Bukowski and Jack Kerouac in Lafleches gritty sex drugs and rock n roll world of excess self-gratification and black comedy.