200 Beats per Minute [Paperback]

Eddie Beverage (Author), Eddie Beuerage (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Highly Recommended -- Midwest Book Review, September 1998

From the Author

I decided I really wanted to reach people with this novel. I wanted them to feel the bass, and see the lights, but I also wanted it to be more than that. When you read 200 Beats, you're witnessing the maturation process in action; the maturation of Danny Boyle..and of myself, as a writer and a person

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Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Sure Shot Pub (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966429702
• ISBN-13: 978-0966429701
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,156,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Self indulgent and dull..., November 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: 200 Beats per Minute (Paperback)

To be honest, I have not managed to finish reading the book because it's self indulgent and dull. I have read the 'Ecstacy club' by Douglas Rushkoff and it's along the same lines as this. If you want to understand more about the rave scene, '200 BPM' definitely gives you an accurate picture of the drug scene - the immaturity of the ravers, the escapism, the pathetic search for the next high, the selfishness of party scene and the stupidity as people throw away challenges to face life's realities. If you want to read a good book, this isn't it. The hero wallows in his own self interest, with endless descriptions of his current altered state of being - hardly an interesting topic. You want to shake him and tell him to wake up and start really living life - have the courage to spend days and nights awake and fully conscious. I personally look for books in which at least the hero is inspirational in some way - this isn't that type of book. Definitely not for me.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very realistic look into drug scene but not life., May 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: 200 Beats per Minute (Paperback)

This book was very compelling and Eddie Beverage when describing the graphic drug details was obviously speaking from experience, however the plot was predictable and the ending was very weak and disappointing.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An amateurish first novel; maybe his next one will be better, May 31, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 200 Beats per Minute (Paperback)

In this short but action-packed novel, Eddie Beverage tries to counteract the popular media portrayal of the "rave culture" as mainly being about drugs, sex, violence, and a slacker ethic. What he succeeds in showing is that, in fact, the "rave culture" is about drugs, sex, violence, and a slacker ethic.

And did I mention drugs?

I can't imagine that anyone could find the protagonists in this book sympathetic, or even particularly interesting. Aside from the perfunctory declaration of peace, love, respect, etc., that is the pledge-of-allegiance-like mantra of the rave culture, these guys apparently stand for nothing except their own aimless self-indulgence and a voracious appetite for drugs, which they consume in endless quantities and varieties.

Even the material about the music, which could have been the most interesting part of the narrative, is fragmented and perfunctory. The author drops a few names, provides some very basic descriptions of differing electronic music styles, and then quickly returns to his real focus, the drugs.

The young people whose misadventures form the basis for the novel might easily have portrayed as confused and harmless, but Beverage actually shows them to be monsters of a sort. In one section, they invade a private home to use the telephone, but when the homeowner returns unexpectedly, one of the group, high on drugs (of course) beats the hapless gentleman into a coma with a golf club. The reader is "relieved" to learn, however, that the merry band of ravers escapes without arrest and then quickly forgets about the whole incident--hey, whatever!

If Beverage thinks he is going to create sympathy for the rave culture through this kind of effort, he is mistaken. Actually, it would not surprise me at all if the book is a kind of put-on, a parody, or perhaps even something created by a member of the Christian Right in a "mole"-like attempt to make the rave culture appear far more dreary, corrupt, and hopeless than it actually is.

The only reason I gave the book two stars instead of one is that I am guessing the book is the novelist's first book, and he should perhaps be cut a bit of slack in its debut :-).