If You Want Me to Stay

An audiobook primarily set in a truck--what could be more perfect? Perhaps nothing, save the stellar narration that puts the listener right in the pickup with two brothers traveling the North Carolina coast with only soul music to guide them. T. Ryder Smith conjures a clear image of 14-year-old Joel, who must try to save his family from his father's madness. Smith's genuine accent serves both female and male characters well and expresses Joel's anger and fear convincingly. Although Smith doesn't sing the soul classics interspersed throughout the novel, his reading paints a vivid picture of a family that draws wisdom from Motown lyrics. Oh yes, please stay. J.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

July 11, 2005
Writing in a Faulknerian first person that conveys the 14-year-old protagonist's mental escape artistry, Parker (Hello Down There
) explores the bonds of a family wracked by mental illness and abandonment in this fully realized fourth novel. In the 1970s rural South, Joel Dunn Jr. takes care of his two younger brothers, Tank and Carter, whenever his father "goes off" and, for example, exorcises their TV. Their mother has long since left for parts unknown; older sister Angie has also bolted without leaving word of her whereabouts. When Joel Sr. hurts Carter during one of his episodes, Joel Jr. packs Tank into their father's truck and sets out to find their mother. That he abandons Carter in the process does not quite penetrate the set of maternal fantasies steadily running in Joel Jr.'s head to the accompaniment of a plethora of Stax/Volt hits. The two find Angie and meet a variety of colorful characters, but the point here is Parker's flawless free and direct vernacular, which exquisitely renders the pain and resulting self-delusion that fuel Joel's quest, his fantasies, his sense of responsibility and his conflicting wish to be taken care of. Gothic undertones adequately prepare one for the book's final, violent pages.