Alternative Atlanta [Hardcover]

Marshall Boswell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 2005

In a funny, poignant, wonderfully original debut novel, the author of the acclaimed short-story collection Trouble with Girls weaves a beguiling tale of fathers and sons, sons and lovers…and one unforgettable summer in a young man’s life–somewhere between a past he doesn’t understand and a future he’s not ready to live….

ALTERNATIVE ATLANTA

For thirty-year-old Gerald Brinkman, life in Atlanta in the year 1996–the summer of the Olympics–doesn’t feel half bad. Writing reviews of basement rock bands for an alternative paper, Gerald has carefully avoided getting a real job, while watching his old friends from grad school start careers, marriages, and affairs–often with each other. But in this one life-changing summer, something is about to happen that will shake Gerald out of his complacency forever.

Gerald’s father, his brilliant, vagabond, and utterly unhelpful father, wants to come and stay with him “for a while.” Ever since childhood, Gerald has tried to bury his relationship with his father under a life of carefully crafted wrong turns. And now Paul Brinkman has shown up with trash bags full of belongings, a medical crisis, and an unbearable confession to make. But Gerald knows one thing for sure: He doesn’t want to hear it. Try as he might to stop it, the future is bearing down on him. A job is being dangled in New York. A secret from his past is waiting to be revealed. An ex-girlfriend is suddenly sending mixed signals. And in one moment in one summer in the city of Atlanta, everything is about to change forever. When it does, Gerald is going to have a whole new vision of who he is, who his father and friends are, and what he must do next.

An exhilarating and touching novel about family and flirtations, growing up and letting go, Alternative Atlanta brilliantly captures a time of life when everything seems possible and impossible at the same time. It is a work of dazzling storytelling from a writer of immense gifts.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gerald Brinkman dropped out of graduate school in Atlanta and now writes reviews of basement rock bands for an alternative newspaper. He has successfully avoided any semblance of responsibility and involvement for 30 years and has a comfortable, if not happy, life. But in the space of two weeks in the summer of 1996, all that comes to an end. His brilliant, placid, and nihilistic father comes to visit, with all his worldly possessions in plastic shopping bags. Acting stranger than usual, he says he has something to tell Gerald but can't seem to get it out. At the same time, the love of his life marries someone else; another woman, also married, seems to be coming on to him; and jobs he doesn't really want keep dropping in his lap. While the Olympics play out in the background, Gerald is forced from his complacency into a frighteningly adult world. Boswell, author of the story collection Trouble with Girls (2003), has written a charmingly quirky first novel with amazing skill and wisdom. Elizabeth Dickie
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“ALTERNATIVE ATLANTA is a heartfelt and kick-ass funny story that is at its essence, about the pain of growing up--especially when you put it off for a decade or two. Smart and highly readable at the same time, keenly observed in refreshingly original style by Marshall Boswell, the promise of his collection TROUBLE WITH GIRLS is equaled and then some.”
--Elizabeth Crane, author of WHEN THE MESSENGER IS HOT

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press (January 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038533852X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385338523
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,287,260 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marshall Boswell is the author of the story collection, "Trouble with Girls" (Algonquin Books, 2003) and the novel "Alternative Atlanta" (Delacorte Press, 2005). Both books are currently available in paperback. His new novel is called "The Opinion Leader" and should be forthcoming soon.

In addition, Marshall has published two book-length scholarly monographs, " John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion" (University of Missouri Press, 2001) and "Understanding David Foster Wallace" (University of South Carolina Press, 2004). He is also the co-editor of Volume IV of "The Encylcopedia of American Literature: 1946 to the Present" (Facts on File, 2008).

Marshall grew up in the Mid-South and received his B.A. from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA. He holds an M.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. from Emory University in Atlanta. Since 1996 he as taught American Literature and Fiction Writing at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, where he is an Associate Professor. He is married and the father of three sons. His old band, Enormous Richard, once opened up for Alex Chilton and Uncle Tupelo. In fact, his band is "thanked" in the liner notes of Uncle Tupelo's first album, though he's pretty sure Jeff Tweedy couldn't pick him out in a police line-up. Incidentally, Marshall's never actually been in a police line-up.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NOT JUST A GREAT FIRST NOVEL: A GREAT NOVEL, February 13, 2005

By 

T. Marshall (Spokane, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alternative Atlanta (Hardcover)

Like his excellent collection of short stories, Alternative Atlanta reveals Boswell to be observant, insightful, and wise to the imperfect ways we love and learn and lose and, again and again and again, try to achieve some sensible direction in a frequently inscrutable world. There are so many ways in which this novel--a debut effort!--achieves greatness: the hit-the-nail-on-the-head portrayal of contemporary music (and music criticism); the brilliant evocation of chaotic, Olympic-obsessed Atlanta; the keenly rendered angst and ennui of the protagonist, Gerald, lost in that early thirty-something morass of directionless desire for something (Something stable? Something "deeper"? Something intellectual? Something just around the next corner?); and, of course, the love-of-language brilliance with which Boswell constructs sentences that give nothing short of delight.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lives in disarray (3.25*s), March 26, 2009

By 

J. Grattan "Ideas can move the world" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alternative Atlanta (Hardcover)

Thirty-year-old Gerald Brinkman seems about as ready for life as Atlanta was for the Olympics: a certain amount of hope and promise early on that masked their lack of preparedness for coping with realities. Set in the Olympic summer of 1996 in Atlanta, Brinkman for the last three years, after dropping out of grad school as a lit major, has been drifting on pot smoking and writing about local rock bands for the local alternative newspaper, based on the actual Creative Loafing. But even this tentative and minimal existence is now being assailed as his long-standoffish father has arrived on the steps of his apartment with apparently all of his worldly possessions in a few bags and his ex-girlfriend and fellow grad student Nora is suddenly getting married.

The book follows Gerald as he lurches from one unsettled aspect of his life to another. His aloof, quirky, and intellectual father has arrived seemingly intent on unburdening himself with deeply held secrets, but Gerald can't get past his father's withdrawal from real parenting after his mother's death many years ago. Gerald's knowledge of rock music is encyclopedic and has even placed him in demand for a job in New York, yet his lack of enthusiasm is quite noticeable. Any conclusiveness that Nora's marriage could have represented is quickly dispelled as she seeks out Gerald for troubles that begin almost immediately in her marriage. And then there is mutual friend Sasha, a married beauty, who has taken a very keen interest in Gerald.

This book is the anti- perfect childhood, straight through grad school by age twenty-four, and on to a great job book. Not to minimize the difficulties of figuring out what life is all about before one is thirty, these characters, especially Gerald, given their intellectual capabilities, seem overly obtuse, self-destructive, and unable to effectively communicate - Gerald can write but not speak effectively. Most interactions seem to end up in squabbling, followed by a disappearing act. The characters are sympathetic, which keeps the book interesting, but puzzling enough to not be totally believable. At times the misconnections threaten the flow of the book.

Residents and visitors to Atlanta will undoubtedly be taken by the accurate descriptions of the Atlanta landscape: the Philly cheese steak shack on Monroe, Piedmont Park, and Centennial Park - the site of the infamous bombing. The author unnecessarily integrates the practically hysterical search for suspects in the bombing into his story. Given the turmoil and uncertainty in the city and in the lives of the characters, the book ends on a rather pacific, almost predictable, note. A lot of issues disappeared or got better quickly.

Note: One suspects that selected readers were sent early copies of the book. All the reviews just after publication were five stars. Hopefully, early reviewers can resist the pressure to inflate reviews. A nice book, but five stars is a reach.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Novel Rocks, February 27, 2005

By 

Adrift in Suburbia (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alternative Atlanta (Hardcover)

Boswell has written one of the funniest, most touching novels I've read in a long time. His portrait of s father who moves in with his slacker son is both hilarious and heartbreaking. Check out his first book too while you're at it, a collection of stories called TROUBLE WITH GIRLS.