Customer Reviews

Tribute to Another Dead Rock Star

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In the great recent tradition of jarringly real young adult fiction from the likes of Bruce Brooks and Chris Crutcher, comes Randy Powell. Winning kudos from such taciturn review sources as Kirkus and high praise from the American Library Association for his earlier works Dean Duffy, The Whistling Toilets, and Is Kissing a Girl Who Smokes Like Licking an Ashtray?, Powell delivers a page-turning speed read with well-developed and memorable characters that break and mend hearts, readers' and each others'. Grady Grennan is the son of Debbie Grennan, the titular dead rock star --- something along the lines of a cross between Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain. There's to be a tribute to dead and inattentive Mom and Grady is to have a role in that, but he's not sure he wants it. There's also his mentally retarded half-stepbrother (the relationships in this book are complicated and mostly dysfuctional, but honestly portrayed) named Louie, one of most endearing of the cast, and certainly the frankest, unsentimental portrayal of retardation this reader has yet seen. Vickie, the wife of Louie's father, is amazingly frustrating and is without doubt, one of the most interesting stepmothers since Cinderella's; her personal revelation in the closing pages of the book make it easily the most satisfying young adult book I've read this year. Powell is quickly becoming a writer of note for this generation of young people. Highly recommended.

Hardcore skater Grady isn't thrilled with life after his rock-star mom overdosed a year ago, now he has to live with his grandmother who wants to tour the country with her new boyfriend in a Winnebago. Grady decides to visit other relatives, and his half-brother Louie in the pacific northwest...and to top it all off, mom's old band wants to get together and have a tribute concert and they want Grady to open the show with a few words...but all Grady can do is picture his absent mom and her final moments: choking on her own vomit.

If you liked this book, try _Dean Duffy_, a great read about finding your little place in the world.

Many people would admire Grady, having a world-famous rock star for a mom. But when she dies of a drug overdose, Grady doesn't know where he belongs. His stepmother is very religious, and she and Grady fight all the time. Plus, he loves his mentally disabled brother Louie, but Louie also drives him crazy sometimes. I thought Grady was a great character, just like a real guy who missed his dead mother. I liked him and wanted everything to work out for him. It's too bad the book's cover is so"cartoony" that it doesn't give an accurate picture of how realistic the book is. I liked the look into the rock music scene and how that life can affect real people.

at first i thought that i wasn't going to like this book.(sorry,sometimes i judge books by their covers). anyway when I started to read it,i couldn't put it down. Grady was . . .How can i say this, a different kind of character. You walk down the street and you see someone like grady and you think that their your average skater. never thinking that they might have fears and doubts just like the next person. this book is a must read.

This book was great! The Author focused on giving his readers a vivid picture to look at as they are reading. The book was about the son of a great and loved rock star, and what he was going through since he found out he had to go to a tribute for his mother. How the people sorrounding the boy were trying to get him a stable home. The many arguments he had with his step-fathers wife, and how he struggled to get permision so his younger yet retarded brother could go. It's great, the ending was the only thing about the book I didn't like.

Three years ago, when he was twelve, Grady's mother died. She had been a rock singer in a very famous band and she died like a rock singer, in her car in the middle of the night, drunk, suffocated with her own vomit. Grady loved her and admires her music, but he isn't sure if he really even knew her. He didn't have a father; he was the result of a fling and his father died before he even found out Grady's mom was pregnant. So Grady spent most of his life living with his grandmother. Now she is remarried and she and her husband want to tour the United States for the next few years in an RV. That means Grady will need to find a place to live. He has a couple of options. He could go to school in Europe for awhile, or he might be able to move in with Mitch and Vickie and their family.

Mitch was Grady's mom's boyfriend for a few years, and they had a son together. Louie is three years younger than Grady and is mentally retarded. He adores Grady and Grady loves him, too, but Vickie, Mitch's wife and a very religious person, thinks that Grady is a bad influence on him. She and Grady are constantly clashing when he goes to visit. Plus, she and Mitch have three other young children together, which makes their house a little crowded.

Now Grady has gone to visit for the weekend, to be near Seattle, where there is going to be a tribute to his mother. A popular rock band influenced by her is putting on a concert, and Grady is getting the VIP treatment from them. But this weekend is difficult for him and for Vickie, who has very different ideas about what things are good for Louie.

I liked Grady's character. He is strong and in control, and he doesn't let things bother him much. He is also good to Louie, even though Louie wears him out. I also liked that Grady's mother is portrayed realistically, and her life isn't glamorized much. I didn't like Vickie and Mitch's family, though. Vickie's personality would be enough to drive anyone crazy. I also didn't like how Grady's grandmother was abandoning him in the middle of his teenage years. It seemed like she could have put her travel plans on hold for a couple more years to see him through high school.

This book is a must. I loved it and finished it in a couple of days. It was inspiring and moving. A boy lost his mother because of music... how touching. I reccommend this book a lot.