Customer Reviews

The Cocaine Chronicles

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From the introduction of The Cocaine Chronicles, editors Gary Phillips and Jervery Tervalon claim that they are "observers of the human condition in its various physical and psychological permutations". They were intrigued by this project as no one has ever broached an anthology on a drug that has been prevalent in our society for well over a century with its hey days in the 1920's and 1980's - decades that celebrated excess. In this bold anthology, we meet the casual sniffers, the heavy users, the dealers, the victims and the unsuspecting victims on both sides of the coast - hysterical romps, tragic characters and unfathomable lows - rendering cocaine a drug that is anything but glamorous. The Cocaine Chronicles is assembled in four sections that loosely dictate the varying degrees of addiction and the affects that cocaine has on its participants.

An encounter between two men in a dive bar incurs chilling consequences in Lee Child's sharp opener, "The Keys" , as the reader bears witness to a low-rate drug mule's frantic confession that he robbed from a powerful Colombian crew - a million to be exact, in cash and keys - to what he believes to be a stranger. In Laura Lippman's "The Crack Cocaine Diet", two seemingly vapid mall rats resolve that the only way to be superior to the boyfriends who have dumped them is to drop weight fast and since the doctors are too "tight with the scripts" and fad diets just won't do, they decide on a cocaine binge to loose their excess baggage. After a series of phone calls, they make off for their adventure and a comedy of errors ensues from confusing drug slang ("American Idol" & "Survivor" as code names for coke and heroin) to screaming at dealers for refunds, the story takes a darker turn when the girls end up at a dealer's home. Lippman soars by deploying subtle cues of the underlying resentment between the two "best friends" and by the story's elegantly-drawn close, the reader learns to never underestimate vengeful, suburban girls.

In the section "Fiending", we shift from cocaine dabbling to full-blown addictions, where weekend party favors morph into daily rituals that turn into the shakes, the twitches, and suddenly you're hungry for your next fix. A junkie narrator crashes with his sixty-three-year-old "weirdly hot" drug dealer, Suzy, as she repeatedly regales Hollywood stories about her dead B-celebrity husband, while begging for coke to be shot up her ass in Jerry Stahl's pitch-perfect, "Twilight of the Stooges" . Stahl captures the tragic and hysterical life of an addict with pristine lucidity:

I don't have memories. I just have nerves that still hurt in my brain. Shooting coke does that. Even when you're smoking it, when you fixed you could just wipe the inside of your skull clean as porcelain. Coke was about toilets and toilets were shiny white.

Through dialogue repetition, false light and a glaring television screen that dully illuminates, Stahl navigates the addict's world with such vigor. Where cocaine is the only light even when you realize you can't remotely feel anything - all your emotions have numbed, where self-humiliation is par for the course and you've become this person who thinks coke is salvation but you're left with white-outs and a life not lived, suffering in a confined, inescapable state of despair that worsens with the passing of each day. In Robert Ward's deliciously twisted "Chemistry", a self-professed "connoisseur" of women - seducing unsuspecting women with feigned sensitivity and cocaine at his local bar - discovers the cost of his sly, manipulative mind-games.

In the section "Corruption", the lens turns its focus outward, to ruminate on the victims of cocaine who are not solely the users. Neglected children that assume adult roles while toiling in their own filth, still yearn to be innocent, playful children yet suffer the consequences of the adult users in their life (a dope-fiend mother, a paternal "pleasant" drug dealer and a down & out landlord frightened to lose his drug connection) in Kerry West's deft tale, "Shame".

In the final section, "Gangsters and Monsters", characters are at their southernmost point. A kingpin drug lord who has now found god and the good life but struggles to snitch on a murder that could inevitably cost him his life, a man leading a ho-hum life is finally awakened when his car is stolen and used in a fatal police car chase/drug bust and a ex-con chef trying to lead a sober, mindful life, gets pulled into the world of celebrity when he works for an eccentric music mogul - all the stories offer the hope for redemption, a way out.

With the exception of a few overwritten, unrealized accounts - the all too-familiar theme that cocaine will ruin your life, with little deviation from this ideology of JUST SAY NO! - the stories in The Cocaine Chronicles are sometimes poignant, sometimes horrifying, but quite frequently, rather satisfying.

Series of short stories all centering around cocaine use. Started reading it last night. Hard to put down. Gives those of us who have no clue as to how the world of cocaine works some insight. Very interesting - fiction or not.

This collection of 17 stories though uneven at times, as might expected, is all in all a worthwhile read. I particularly enjoyed Ten Keys by Lee Child about a guy trying to rip off drug dealers; Susan Straight's Poinciana about a strung out hooker;Chemistry by Robert Ward about the set up in a bar of a self styled stud; Golden Pacific by Nina Revoyr about the sad life of a 13 year old girl forced into prostitution;Sentimental Value by Manuel Ramos about a former star athlete who was seriously injured in Vietnam; Just Surviving Another day by Detrice Jones about the day to day struggle for survival of a black schoolgirl;and Bill Moody's Camaro Blue about a jazz musician who ends up touched romantically by the death of a car thief.

As a 20 year old college student, I know the "hype" of "pot", "blow", "x" and other drugs...drugs are an epidemic on college campuses...
I read an article/review on this book and bought it right away...For a person who doesn't read much...I'm surprised to find my hands permanantly glued to this book. It's addicting! I even recommended it to some friends, and other students on campus (who were confused as to why I was walking around with the book)...
For those high school/college students...get this book..you won't regret it!

I was expecting more. There were some excellent short stories, the Lee Child and Laura Lippman short stories,for example. Though the others were not very good. Forced myself to finish it. Still these type of books are a great way to be introduced to new authors.

In the short story collection 'The Cocaine Chronicles' (Akashic Books, 2005), noted true crime writers Gary Phillips and Jervey Tervalon have compiled 17 astonishing tales of addiction. The stories investigate all aspects of the drug lifestyle from the hunt for the drug into the underworld that surrounds it and most interestingly the psychological impact that the drug has those ensnared in its grip.

'Chronicles' is a solid example of the cutting edge, blow-your-mind literature that has made Akashic Books a household name in both the independent and commercial publishing industries.

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