Customer Reviews

Austin Nights

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sometimes I feel that the best literary fiction is where nothing much happens and everybody feels deeply about it. Put another way, literary fiction is where all of the action is between the head and heart.

However one defines it, I aver emphatically that Austin Nights is the best work of literary fiction I have read in several years.

Michael Davidson, the author, relates through Michael Davidson, the hero, a view of the world that is unique, innocent, obsessive, without cynicism and tragicomic. He does it with prose that makes you stop and re-read, not for meaning but for the simple pleasure of it.

This novel, where nothing much happens, will have a profound emotional effect on you. I feel guilty paying only .99 for it.

And this is Exhibit A in the failure of traditional publishing to spot genius.

Bitterly funny and beautifully deranged, this lovely story pulled me into a vivid dreamspace where I embraced the knowledge that life today is increasingly surreal. As Kafka said, "A story should be an axe to break the frozen sea within us." The revolution will be printed, not televised!

"Austin Nights" by Herocious is an engaging and lyrical tale of a young couple's journey and adjustment to life in Austin, Texas. Each half of this couple helps tell this story. Michael, a dreamer confronting the realities of adulthood, does most of the heavy narrative lifting while his girlfriend provides the occasional doses of perspective.

The book manages to be both poetic, honest and thematically dense.

Thank you for publishing this novel, Michael. It is the best work of literary fiction I have read in years (and that includes Russo and Junot Diaz)

I thought this book was great. Very easy to read. The only thing I don't love is the cover.

You wont put this great summer read down! All at once, Austin Nights is light and colloquial, deep and provocative, and quirkily charming. The story can resemble a diary whose pages have been ripped out and strewn across the floor, taking the reader down a winding road toward an unknown goal. If you're like me, though, you'll love the feeling that you're never sure what's coming next. If you prefer more traditional formats, take heart; stick with this seemingly disjointed plot line and you'll be encouraged with a few pleasant surprises along the way and an extremely gratifying ending. You'll close the book and ponder life's great coincidences with a smile- left with that delicious feeling of wondering exactly where the line between truth and fiction has been drawn.

I hope Michael learned the significance of that change oil light.

I find Bridget exquisitely beautiful and love her as much as Michael.

Enjoy!

Straddling the mundane and the profound, the low life and the high life, sparkle and splatter, this is a story of Austin from the somewhat leery perspective of a pair of Miami emigrants. It's a period of transition and also an opportunity for Michael to take intricate stock of his innards and outards. Michael and Bridget and the Stockholm syndrome-suffering Honeyed Cat are vivid. The book is structured and written in a style that makes engagement inevitable. Do yourself a favor and get a physical copy of Austin Nights (from tiny toe press) if for no other purpose but achieving quantum entanglement with the author.

The struggle and the pursuit of happiness in a transition to a new environment has never been so perfectly spelled out as in this novel. For those acquainted with Austin as well as those who are not, this book provides insight into the city and the soul. Michael as a character and an author has a great way of describing the days, with every experience playing a part in his future life and blood. A great read that is difficult not to want to finish in one or two sittings. Pick this one up, you won't regret it.

Your heroes are Austin Nights. The days drive on in measured miles, hours, dollars, choking degrees. Days, you are keeping alive. Nights flow by in fluid ounces, greening grams, hard questions, easy answers, bats. Nights, you are Keeping Weird.

Your hero is Honeyed Cat, as oblivious to her terminal condition as Michael wishes he could be to his own. Of course she could escape; is she protecting herself or them?

Your hero is Bridget, who works and saves things, saves creatures, like Honeyed Cat, like... She knows how long it takes Michael to make his meal, and then to eat it. I'm thinking it's about three times as long as it takes him to make one of these hand-pressed books, at the very same table. The food that keeps him alive, the book that keeps him from dying. How much is she bothered by this pacing? Only the right amount. She knows the right amount to be bothered by things.

Your heroes are Austin Knights, chivalrous in their restraint when Weirdness threatens them, and when it threatens the Weird. Library lechery, domestic violence alone by yourself, and free-bleeding head wounds suggest certain proactive remedies. These are enumerated, debated, clenched in nervous teeth and shaken to see if the neck snaps. But obviously they are not pursued; the Weirdness will run its course. An Austin Knight would not and could not fight the Weirdness any more than you could fight the sun. Times you bask in it, times you shade from it, but clearly it would not collapse beneath your blows so please don't bother.

Your hero is Michael, who writes you an honest book. You don't ask a man more than that. In Archer City, they'll fling you into the street, you'll die gasping, wheezing, soul-stung, chastened, you ask a man more than that. Michael has done right by you here. Your petty claim is paid and overpaid.

Your heroes are Austinites. I do not say they are from Austin, but they know where to find the river, their local library, a store sounding like a slur, bats, cones, Weird, steel, spice, and each other. Mike's a hero to me for making this book and writing this book. Thanks Mike.