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Rating: 
Summary: Lyrical prose for a dark topic
Review: This book is a 1990's rebellion against the weight of books that predominated back then from such uncaring authors as Harold Robbins and John Grisham. Heroin addiction is not an issue presented in lyrical prose. However, taking cues from poets such as Philip Larkin and Charles Bukowsky, Plesko manages to do it well. A renown writing and award-winning teacher at the UCLA Extension Writers Program, and also named in the acknowledgements of Janet Fitch's "White Oleander," Plesko creates a harrowing world of drug addiction, derailed intentions, and unflinchingly unlikeable characters around his inexperienced main character, aptly named College. His writing has a wistful tone, yet because of the concentration on specifics avoids overt sentimentality: "I hope she a girl who's good at removing herself, who can hide for a very long time." "I can't get my mind to shut up. Maybe right now Maria is thinking the john reminds her of one of five fathers, the man in a pair of plaid slacks and lime crewneck sweater, his hair greased with pomade, the unraveling fake-leather steering wheel cover." Such attention to details is both the strongpoint, but also challenges the reader not to get lost in the description. Perhaps this is the problem. At times the details seem to be a coverup for true emotion, choices and action for the characters. One is left wondering: where is this going? Why should I care? Can I make it through one more dazzingly described addiction scene? One may not let the descriptions carry the characters, rather the characters need to be ahead of the environment created in the book. There are points where College is simply so introspective he fails to make any choices, which is invariably frustrating for both writer and reader. Still, this is an important book. One can only hope that in future books, Plesko finds the courage to step away from too much philosophical meanderings, let his own voice sing, and just tell a worthy story.
Rating: 
Summary: self-absorbed
Review: This is a book only one reader will like: its writer. A solipsistic experiment in writing, this book is the product of ultimate selfishness. The author sees only himself and his words without sending a message to the reader, who is not quite the vulgate audience. What's left for the reader is to decipher rhythmic lines only. Editorial reviews have already suggested the lack of a storyline, the lack of plot, of a coherent novel structure. Added to the writer's autistic verbal universe, this book's flow becomes an experiment in writing, not a novel per se. Maybe this is why this writer could not publish anything in the past ten years. Not even the excuse that the writer is Kate Braverman's student is strong enough to justify his wordiness. With no other publication to prove his self-absorbed geniality, this writer remains a mere failed disciple. The female characters are dehumanized through pain beyond the level the body can take. Ultimately, these women's hyperbolic decay transformed them in monstrosities, the only thing the author could subconsciously do in order to compensate for his lack of inspiration, for the lack of a story. Characters become cartoonish in their engrossed dehumanization, the product of a misogynist mind. Such an autistic style poses problems when the writer is faced with alternative creative styles. His stylistic universe is egocentrically closed; it's the only thing that gives this writer the quality of author, in the absence of other novelistic virtues. Closed in his word-weaved cocoon, this writer will always miss or hate other creative styles the human mind generates in an infinite universe of expressiveness.
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