Life in a long-stay motel, overseen by the on-site muscle: ‘if this was a movie, he’d be played by Steve Buscemi’. Twelve-hour shifts at a mundane job alongside a host of strange characters with their own struggle to make it to the end of the day. Anecdotes from journals of adventures past: wannabe musicians, ill-fated relationships and the bottom of a bottle. Musings on life, death, dreams, … dreams, and the frustrations of the writing process: the journal entries were written while during the creation of the author’s debut novel, Rum Hijack.
Dream Diary
The second part of Plumas de Muerte is as it says: a small collection of dreams: what goes on while we are asleep?
A raw ride that makes no attempt to gloss over the darker side of the author’s life at the time, while acting as a cautionary tale about the nightmare of substance abuse – and the final road of alcoholism/addiction.
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I chose to read this novel as a proud member of Rosie’s Book Review Team and received a copy from the author. This does not affect my review in any way.
The reader is warned at the beginning of this book that it is unrevised for authenticity and, for what follows, that is exactly as it should be. These are typed and handwritten journals set mostly between Phil’s motel room and his place of work. The dreams segment fills probably the last 20% of the book and I wasn’t so interested in that part. But the journals absolutely drew me in.
The book journals the life of this author while he was writing his novel, Rum Hijack (which I highly recommend), and it shows an increasingly unhappy life both at home, which the motel isn’t, really, and work. The writer is under considerable pressure in his work life but I enjoyed the tales he told of day to day life with his colleagues and the politics involved.
Throughout this writer is struggling. He drinks enough to affect him at work and to a lesser extent takes drugs. However, his life completely spirals out of control when a former girlfriend gets in touch, brings happiness back into his life, then does something to break his battered heart completely. His grief is visceral and pushes him over the edge. That this book has been published shows he was saved from the abyss and I am thankful for that.
This writer is tremendously talented. He makes the most mundane conversation or scene interesting and there is plenty here for those who appreciate excellent writing to enjoy.
The ‘Tequila Journals’, the first part of this book, makes up 80% of the whole. There are two main settings: an unnamed place of work, and the motel in which the diarist lives. Doesn’t sound very thrilling? It is. PM is one of those scribes who has the knack of making an after-work beer in a fast food establishment or wrangles over his room rent with the seedy ‘Steve Buscemi’ as riveting as any ‘fast-paced’ action thriller. I once noted that memoir writer Val Poore managed to bring tears to my eyes in a short chapter about the lighting of oil lamps. This was similar; it’s not the subject matter, but the innate talent of the writer.
When I got nearer to the end I felt that, although maybe not meant as such, it does make up an actual story. We see how PM’s frustration with his working life and writing increases, how he becomes jaded with (and fails to chase up) possible romantic opportunities, how his depression about events from the past deepens, his drinking becomes more and more out of hand, until happiness visits his life once more, only to be ripped away—and sends his life spiralling completely out of control. At the end, I turned over the page and thought, ‘What, no more? But what happens next?’. I’m hoping he will write the next ‘chapter’ at some point.
One of my favourite sections in the Tequila Journals was a look back at a crazy, chaotic time spent in Colorado, which reminded me of a Kerouac novel, though there’s nothing pretentious, plagiarised or ‘wannabe’ about PM’s writing style; it’s unique, and appears to be the sort of effortless that tells me he doesn’t realise how good he is. Throughout, every character is perfectly captured in just a couple of lines of dialogue.
The dream diary at the end: I am one of those who dislikes dream sequences in films or books, and suppresses yawns when people go into detail about a dream they had, but I liked these; they were well put together, not rambling, and the style and structure varied. Also, having read the book, I could see what was behind some of them—some aspects of loss, isolation and anger.
I’ve read the novel, Rum Hijack, that PM was writing at the time these journal entries were made, and I loved it, but in a way I like some aspects of this collection even more. Includes some relevant artwork and photos. Highly, highly recommended.