The Grand Tour

June 27, 2016
Overweight, middle-aged, and alcoholic, Vietnam veteran and failed writer Richard Lazar is living in a trailer in the Arizona desert in 2005 when his Vietnam War memoir is published and becomes a smash hit. Richard is launched on a cross-country book tour of signings and readings, a disaster waiting to happen. In Price’s excellent debut novel, he nails Richard’s unpleasant character perfectly, a weak and flawed man who disappoints everyone around him, especially himself. At a reading at a college in Washington, Richard meets Vance Allerby, a college dropout and wannabe writer, who idolizes Richard and is his most ardent fan. These unlikely pals, the cynical drunk and the naive idealist, team up for Richard’s book-tour road trip (Richard hates to fly and Vance likes to drive). Together they embark on an alcohol-fueled adventure filled with embarrassing public pratfalls, funny and poignant barroom philosophy, and the uncomfortable realization that they actually need each other, even for just a few months. Richard is suddenly famous and can’t handle it, but Vance is a lonely guy whose only manuscript Richard has thrown into the trash. Vance has always wanted to be an ideal version of Richard but is utterly disappointed that his idol is a bum. Still, the two make it to New York City, where a surprise ending caps off the story.

June 1, 2016
A novelist on the ropes gets one last shot at redemption--and predictably screws it up, right on cue.In this debut novel, Price offers up an acridly witty portrait of the artist in decline. We meet his protagonist, writer Richard Lazar, as he's shaken awake from an Ambien-and-vodka-induced coma aboard an airplane. It turns out the aging pugilist of an author has been sent out on the unlikeliest of book tours for Without Leave, a memoir about his service in Vietnam. It's not much, but it beats eking out an existence in a trailer park in Phoenix and annoying his estranged daughter, Cindy. Lazar is met by his student escort, Vance Allerby, a shy wannabe writer whose life has been dominated by his depressed mother. If there's a theme to the book, it's that the cliche of drinking writers is characteristically true, at least in this case--we follow Richard from bar to hotel room to bar for blackout drinking sessions. It's only in rare moments that we learn that Lazar's character isn't really a cynic, just a disappointed optimist. "You asked me the other night, at the thing, what advice I'd give young writers," Richard tells Vance. "And I gave you some glib answer, and I feel shitty about that. I probably acted like I think it's all a waste of time, which I do, but still. Everything's a waste of time, but books are better than everything else. There's some kind of dumb honor in it, at least." From here, the novel becomes a road comedy of sorts, interspersed with excerpts from Lazar's novel, the core of which turns out to be as counterfeit as its creator. Price is a finely trained writer, and the novel recalls the late John O'Brien's Leaving Las Vegas in many respects. Fans of literary writers will find much to appreciate here, while more casual readers are likely to view our man's unraveling like a car crash, watching from between their fingers.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2016
This debut novel is, like many of its kind, a road book. After his career as a literary novelist hit the skids, burned-out author and alcoholic Richard Lazar found unexpected success with a Vietnam memoir and now finds himself on a book tour. Picked up at an airport by his one-time student Vance Allerby, Lazar accepts Allerby's offer to drive him on the rest of the tour. So begins the road trip in which this equally disaffected pair makes a shambles of one event after another. Interspersed with their travels are chunks of the Vietnam memoir itself, which turns out to be more interesting, more believable, and even funnier than what happens on the road. Still, while the peripatetic nature of the road trip leads to too many unnecessary plot twists, now and again Price hits pay dirt, as when the pair is joined in Las Vegas by the author's addled daughter, and a wonderful scene ensues between Lazar and a man to whom his daughter may owe money. Like most road trips, this one has its highs and lows, but readers will be glad they tagged along.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)