Drift: A Novel [Paperback]

Manuel Luis Martinez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

An explosive, fierce, and lyrical novel, set in the barrios of San Antonio and Los Angeles, from an electrifying new voice in American fiction

At sixteen, Robert Lomos has lost his family. His father, a Latin jazz musician, has left San Antonio for life on the road as a cool-hand playboy. His mother, shattered by a complete emotional and psychological breakdown, has moved to Los Angeles and taken Robert’s little brother with her. Only his iron-willed grandmother, worn down by years of hard work, is left. But Robert’s got a plan: Duck trouble, save his money, and head to California to put the family back together. Trouble is, no one believes a delinquent Mexican American kid has a chance—least of all, Robert himself.

Wrenching and wise, Drift gives an unflinching vision of the menace of adolescence, the hard edge of physical labor, and the debts we owe to family.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Martinez's impressive second novel (after Crossing) gives us the world through the eyes of 16-year-old Mexican-American Robert Lomos, part tough-talking cynic, part sensitive older brother and son who is forced to learn more than he wants to about adult responsibilities when his mother has a mental breakdown. Robert's father, a jazz musician, abandoned his family two years before; his mother became unstable after his desertion and left San Antonio, Tex., to live with a sister in Los Angeles, taking Robert's three-year-old brother with her. Robert now lives with his no-nonsense grandmother, who sends him to the evangelical Sunnydale Christian Academy when he gets kicked out of public school for acting out. Robert is no angel-favorite activities include fighting, getting high and cruising for girls-but he longs to reunite his family. The jobs available to him, mainly busboy positions, are arduous and low paying, but he toughs it out until he has the money to get to Los Angeles (and succinctly sums up what many restaurant employees think of customers: "Watching them eat is enough to turn you against humanity"). He is hardly welcomed in L.A. with open arms, however. His aunt, Naomi, is hostile and suspicious, fearing that he'll upset the family's fragile equilibrium. Robert's efforts to help his brother, Antony, in school go awry, and he's once again getting into fights. Above all, his mother is more fragile than he imagined, and his attempt at a gallant rescue does not work out as he'd hoped. The story flags somewhat when he returns to San Antonio and a construction job, but Robert's biting, assured voice makes the book a standout.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Like all teenage narrators, Robert is very bright and precociously literate. According to him, he has read and absorbed The Sound and the Fury, East of Eden, and Kurt Vonnegut. Despite Robert not always being a believable character, his journey to make peace with his family and himself is heartbreakingly realistic. His father has left the family, and his mother has suffered a breakdown and taken Robert's little brother to live with her and her sister in California. Robert is left in San Antonio with his ulcer, failing grades, and grandmother. Robert believes he can grow up fast enough to put his family back together. Along the way, Robert gets in a fight, resulting in several broken teeth. This sparks the first of many allusions to vampires, never fully explained or explored. This first novel is awkward in places, but there are passages of depth and sensitivity. The characters, almost all working poor, are treated with a dignity and respect not always seen in fiction. Marta Segal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312309953
• ISBN-13: 978-0312309954
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #726,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a prof at Ohio State and have been writing for over a decade. My new novel, Day of the Dead, is due out early 2010. I write about the struggles of ordinary Mexican Americans, mostly younger narrators who have a lot to deal with. I try to use humor and I draw from my early life growing up in the barrios of San Antonio's westside. You can check out my website at www.manuelmartinez.info which includes interviews, pictures, my blog: Gag Reflects, and lots of other stuff. Check it out and feel free to write me at [e-mail] to let me know what you think about my books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sick of it all, May 11, 2003

By 

The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Drift: A Novel (Paperback)

DRIFT is the Robert Lomos' story as he travels through the journey that some of us refer to as "becoming a man." The product of a marriage that didn't last, Robert had to grow up when he should have been thinking of little kid stuff: carnivals instead of caring for his baby brother; Little League instead of worrying about his father's infidelity; homecoming instead of witnessing his mother's mental breakdown. Robert has sees his life take a downward spiral when his aunt takes his mother from San Antonio to Los Angeles, to aid her in her convalescence, and insists he stay behind.

Robert lives with his Grams now at age seventeen, and his routine of partying hard, fighting, and cutting school has her at wit's end. So, she enrolls him in a private Christian school, where she believes he will be saved from the trouble that looms in his path. However, Robert ends up in even more scuffs and in even more bad situations than when he attended public school. Robert is tired of his ulcer causing him physical pain, and his mother and brother's absence causing him emotional pain. He decides to get a job, go to Los Angeles and try to convince them that he is now a man, a changed soul who is there to be their saving grace.

Manuel Martinez has carefully constructed his protagonist's voice. A strong, resonant narrator, Robert's spirit breathes new life into the first-person format of the novel. You could see Robert as clearly as if he were standing next to you, hear his voice as if he were whispering in your ear, and feel the heartache he feels, as if it were your own tribulation. A commendable novel, DRIFT foreshadows of more great things to come from Martinez.

Reviewed by CandaceK
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting Real, October 21, 2006

By 

Page Turner - See all my reviews

This review is from: Drift: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is an amazingly accurate portrayal of what life is like as a teen in the US today. What makes this book so impressive is that it never shies away from the hard realities and underside of growing up in America: drugs, sex, violence, loss, adults who let you down, serious responsibility...you name it, this book confronts it. That's not to say these things are glorified--they are wrestled with, suffered through, examined and ultimately the novel culminates in...if not redemption, then at least hope.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Book about at risk teen is a sure thing, April 13, 2004

By 

Lorenzo Tijerina (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Drift: A Novel (Paperback)

Trouble hunts some people down, while others seem to effortlessly avoid its camouflaged clutches. And still others charge headfirst into its clumsy, but firm grip.
Robert Lomos, the 16-year-old protagonist of Manuel Luis Martinez's latest offering, "Drift," wears his pain proudly all over his body. For him, trouble serves as his only reliable companion, besides his aged and ever working Grams.
Abandoned by his rambling father, a womanizing and party-hungry Tejano musician, circumstances forced Robert to quickly grow up and become the man of the house, caring for his innocent and perceptive little brother and his frail and mentally anguished mother.
But the stress from the daily challenges of a broken home quickly overwhelmed his mother and she, too, leaves Robert, taking his little brother with her to California where her overbearing sister wrapped her in a protective cocoon.
Written in the first person, the free-flowing, steam-of-consciousness-driven novel opens at Sunnydale Christian Academy in the barely fictionalized version of San Antonio where Robert lives now with his grandmother.
Sunnydale represents a last ditch effort by Grams to keep Robert, who has been kicked out of two school districts in just as many years, from becoming a "burro" like her.
Although the school is strict and even degrading - making the students raise a flag to go to the bathroom - Robert plays along so he can realize an abstract plan to follow his mother to the Promise Land of Orange County.
Although it has its share of bumps and dips, the narration develops much more smoothly than Robert's scheme, which seems inevitably doomed by the boy's own self-destructive notions. These notions pull and push the troubled youth, like a deceptively calm river, towards rocks, rapids, and a great, final fall, while his bruised and battered body drifts along for the ride.
Painful and frustrating, Robert's journey towards the verge of either oblivion or manhood and his swift plunge over the edge also compel the reader along with concealed currents.
These currents, however, spring from the reader's own history, a checkered past mixed up with a city that is simultaneously beautiful and dangerous, inviting and repulsive.
Robert shares this same confused, yet powerfully intimate relationship with San Antonio. The reader immediately empathizes with Robert, who makes references to the molinos, the "Edgewood School District," la matanza, the Alizondo Courts and the yerba buena of the West Side.
And while the educational system would be quick to label him as "at risk," we quickly realize he is no typical juvenile delinquent when he alludes to "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Catch 22," and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
His love of books and aversion to school, however, does place him squarely in a stereotype cornered by another literary character: Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye."
Although a strong comparison could be made between the two - both on a journey, both dropouts with strong ties to distant siblings - Robert is far more, well, likeable.
And while Holden's aversion to phonies seemed sometimes paranoid, Robert's demons are not so subtle. They scramble to meet him, beat him and kick out his four front teeth.
Still, Robert keeps getting up, and we root for the barrio boy each time, hoping he makes good, because when he stands up he stands for all the disregarded, misunderstood, underrepresented young men struggling on the West Side of our San Anto.