Tony Diggs is a strung-out punk musician whose band has a single getting some college radio play, so things are looking up. He's just gotten the boot from his longtime girlfriend and moved into a suburban dollhouse with Cindy, a cancer survivor whose mom, Lois, doesn't mind Tony moving in (to share Cindy's meds) as long as he does her some favors: mowing the lawn, shopping, performing analingus on her. The usual stuff.

Aside from keeping the drugs in check, Tony has some problems: his father is dying, his band is having a hard time getting gigs (since they don't play covers) and the situation with Cindy and her mom is starting to make him feel like a parasite, especially when Lois goes into rehab and offers him a hundred dollars a week to Cindy-sit. New York City beckons with friends, connections, and gig opportunities (supposedly), but he's worried that he can't take it to the next level as a musician, that he may be a navel gazer, unable to contribute anything meaningful, or that he will be ground under the heel of the world because he lacks the style others seem to display effortlessly.

Mike Boyle's debut novel reads like Raymond Carver in a punk house; his prose is spare and controlled. This is not a suburban coming of age story about a privileged teen dabbling in self-abuse and then discovering the errors of his ways and buckling down to go to college. Tony Diggs has been to college (and dropped out). He has a job (for awhile, anyway). That's not enough. He was good and damaged early on, and it turned him into a square peg in a world of round (ass)holes.

There is much to like about this book. It moves with a furious pace, wasting not a note. Tony's moral dilemmas feel authentic, especially when it comes to Cindy; he's a fuck-up who got lucky with a pretty girl and a promising situation, and he knows it will end soon. He dreams about being famous because that's the American dream, but he knows the situation would probably sour quickly. He loves making music and doesn't meditate endlessly on his own unrecognized genius. He's in a dollhouse, surrounded by beautiful, slightly disturbing approximations of humanity. He's not a doll, can't be one, and so he doesn't know what to be.

-CL Bledsoe