“Full of gorgeous language and wild insights.”—Nick FlynnSet in the beleaguered heart of Indiana’s opioid crisis, Brian Allen Carr’s timely and tender novel about a teen struggling to find his place in the world—and come up with $800 rent—is at once a moving rumination on the hopeful power of story and a harrowing insight into modern America. It is a book you won’t soon forget.Seventeen-year-old … forget.
Seventeen-year-old Riggle is living in rural Indiana with his uncle and uncle’s girlfriend after the death of his parents. Now his uncle is missing, probably on a drug binge. It’s Monday, and $800 in rent is due Friday. Riggle, who’s been suspended from school, has to either find his uncle or get the money together himself. His mission exposes him to a motley group of Opioid locals—encounters by turns perplexing, harrowing, and heartening.
With empathy and insight, Carr explores what it’s like to be a high school kid in the age of Trump—a time of economic inequality, addiction, Confederate flags, and mass shootings. Through the voice of its unforgettable protagonist—charismatic, confused, searching, by turns cynical and naïve, wise and impulsive—Opioid, Indiana pierces to the heart of our moment.
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For any teenager growing up in the opioid epidemic, or for any adult that grew up in a town that sat somewhere to the left of normal… this offers a sense of belonging and a melancholy understanding of home that authors can’t quite capture on a page. This is a coming of age story for today’s generation as much as “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” was for mine.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but I will admit, the cover (and title) of this book intrigued me. Also, while I’d never read any of his work, I have long been aware of Brian Allen Carr, solely because I am familiar with horror subgenre of Bizarro (though I’m neither a big fan nor a detractor of it).
So when I saw this book and realized that the author was the very same behind titles such as “The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World” and “Motherfucking Sharks,” published by the short-lived imprint Lazy Fascist Press, I had to check this out — at least in part to see how Carr is able to leap from the world of Bizarro to a more mainstream audience via his new publisher, Soho.
What I found is that like my old friend Jeremy Robert Johnson, Carr is a rare author, capable of deftly skirting the line between the literary and the weird. There are some elements of Bizarro to be found here (e.g., the narrator, 17-year-old Riggle, uses his fingers to make a shadow figure named Remote who tells myths about how the days of the week got their names), but the strange bits neither detract nor distract from what is a straightforward plot of an orphaned teen on a week-long journey to locate his legal guardian, Uncle Joe, who is out on a drug binge. Along the way you see what Riggle sees, and he tells you about his life. It moves along swiftly toward an ending that I should have seen coming but caught me completely by surprise. The story is sad, but not without hope. It is real, it is timely, and it is well-written. It is a book that has heart and deals with its subject matter with sensitivity.
To me, “Opioid, Indiana” feels like a modern-day Trump-era twist on “The Catcher In the Rye.” Riggle is suspended for a week from his suburban Indiana high school, much like Holden Caulfield is booted from the ritzy Pencey Prep — only Riggle’s days-long journey takes him through the depressed, drug-riddled streets and cornfields of rural Indiana, rather than through the borough of Manhattan. Instead of sneering at the phoniness of the upper class, he is fascinated by the low-level tragedies he sees in Indiana’s lower class — though, like Holden, Riggle feels an immense disconnect from society. Instead of a NYC penthouse occupied by a sister and parents he can return to, Riggle’s parents are dead, and he has only his addict uncle and his uncle’s girlfriend, Peggy, as family. Holden has Mr. Spencer for a mentor; Riggle is mentored and employed by a brusque but kind restaurateur referred to only as “Chef.”
The comparisons between the novels could go on, but I’ll limit myself to just two more:
First, both Salinger and Carr obviously put a lot of themselves into their respective teenaged narrators (Salinger spent much time in New York, and Carr, like Riggle, is from Texas and now lives in Indiana). In fact, both Holden and Riggle at times feel like surrogates for the authors — vessels through whom they can wax poetic. Given that the two characters were created by the authors when they were well beyond their teenage years, this could be problematic, yet both Holden and Riggle authentically inhabit the world through which they traverse. Carr, though (like me) a teen in the ’90s, writes convincingly from the point of view of a kid two decades his junior — and that, in my opinion, is no small feat.
Second, based on Goodreads reviews, opinions on “Opioid, Indiana” seem to be nearly as divisive as those regarding “Catcher.” People either get them, or they don’t. They either love the books, or they dismiss them — Hell, maybe Carr himself would cringe at the correlation.
But again, from what I’ve read, the dislike of these books is often due to the readers’ aversion to the narrators who, though intelligent and observant, are also immature and, at times, unlikable. And the plots are kind of loose; the characters tend to ramble, reporting on what they see and how it makes them feel. If you have little to say, this can be a drag.
But in my opinion, Carr pulls it off well, and I like Riggle. I like what he has to say. I feel empathy for him. As I am reading, I want good things for him, and I am invested in his journey. All that said, I think it’s time I familiarize myself with Carr’s past output.
Liked parts of this one, others seemed to be just ramblings! Seventeen year old has had a rough life, then he ends up in the Midwest! His trouble persist with an Uncle on drugs, his girlfriend who is not very motivated to do anything which leaves Riggles to handle his existence on his own! Loved the character Chef and some of the towns eccentric characters!