OK, just read this book even if you have never heard about it.

Trust me, have I ever steered you wrong? No.  I don't know why I got this book out of the library, but it must have been from reading a review. It's good. It is really good. It starts out slowly but you get into it and you like the very few characters that populate the book and  you are a tiny bit sad that it ends.

The Grand Tour by Adam O'Fallon Price.  An ostensibly simple story about a guy who wrote a book and is on a book tour to promote that book. But it takes detours and wrong roads and paths that lead nowhere and yet it ends up where it should. It got me in the first two pages with this description of getting off a plane: He frankensteined it through the cabin and up the long jet bridge and emerged into the fluorescence of the shabbiest boarding gate he'd ever seen.  Several ceiling panels were half rotten with brown water stains and one was missing entirely, providing a nice view of the filth-caked girders above.  A darkened McDonald's brooded to itself across the empty room.

Who hasn't experienced that sort of dismal greeting in a small, crappy airport?  I know I have. 

The book just gets better as it goes on, as Richard tries really hard to respect the book tour but he usually just gets drunk and is sad about that but he does the tour anyway, with his strange driver, Vance.  More good sentences: The nice part about being young wasn't really being young; it was not being old. So true.

Maybe the trick was to just allow yourself to want things. To accept the wanting without attempting to gratify it. Fighting the want did no good, because it was impossible to make yourself not want things. Furthermore, fighting the want somehow promoted it, legitimized it, made the desire for booze or women or whatever else terribly  strong and potent.

I could go on  and quote page and page and page. This is a really good book. It has pain and hope and very, very small atoms of joy and so much is unresolved at the end.  And I want to tell you the last sentence but I won't.  Suffice it to say that you should get this book out of the library or if you find a copy on the discount table or at the used book store, buy it.  Or buy it at full price and tell me you did, and will share that price with you.  If you don't like it, I will buy it from you.

It isn't a Great Novel but, for me, it is a Really Good Novel. The test of that for me is this: do I want to read this book instead of watching TV?  Yes, Yes, Yes was my answer for three nights.

"...and just for the moment he tried to forget himself and become part of the over-whelming life that surrounded him."

If you read it, let me know what you think.
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