Rating: 
Summary: Elegant writing but lesser Grimsley
Review: This latest novel by Jim Grimsley is a coming-of-age tale about Newell, a naive young man from Alabama who moves to New Orleans and gradually comes to terms with his sexuality. The book is filled with Grimsley's characteristic elegant prose. His skill in evoking the feel of a locale is remarkable--the sights, tastes, sounds and even smells of New Orleans come vividly to life for the reader. However, Grimsley's ability to draw complete characters becomes a liability in this work, as about halfway through Newell's story is relegated to the sidelines in favor of following the lives of other colorful but subsidiary denizens of the seedy demimonde of the Latin Quarter. A belated attempt to resolve the central tale results in a rushed and unsatisfactory conclusion. Still, the incidental pleasures of the author's prose are enough to make this a worthwhile read.
Rating: 
Summary: COMING OF AGE ON THE BIG EASY BOULEVARDS
Review: This novel tells the stories of a circa 1976 New Orleans, Newell, a somewhat naïve country boy who moves there from Alabama, and the various people he encounters after his arrival. Reading this book, you'll visit a New Orleans that will never exist again and meet a cast of vivid characters that you will never forget. The story begins as Newell arrives in New Orleans on a one-way bus ticket with just enough cash to live on for a few weeks until he finds a job. (If you can call eating cold canned soup living.) Luckily, his innocence (and probably his boyish charm) finds him a place to live, gets him a job as a bus boy, loses his job as a bus boy and finds him yet another job in a porno bookstore where he is allowed to thrive, develop and meet the other characters populating the boulevard of New Orleans. And what characters they are -- you'll love some and hate others, find some with stories that almost make you cry and others that are just unforgettable. Actually, some of the characters are so totally developed they could be the center of a book of their own. This novel is the first thing I've read by Jim Grimsley and I discovered very quickly that he is a first class writer. Naturally that makes BOULEVARD a first class book, and probably the best I've read this year! If you are like me and haven't read Jim Grimsley before, get this book now! You won't be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: Boulevard of Missed Opportunities
Review: Those unfamiliar with Jim Grimsley's work will find "Boulevard" an imaginative and sometimes surreal coming-of-age tale set in New Orleans of the late 1970's. But those who have read his previous novels, including "Winter Birds" and the award-winning "Dream Boy," will be disappointed. The characters in those novels had an intensity that radiated from deep-seated anxieties. There is no such angst or self-consciousness with the present books characters, who are largely callow and uninspired automatons in an aimless plot. Newell, Boulevard's main character, leaves his provincial existence in rural Alabama for America's most decadent city, save the larcenous leviathan of Washington, DC. The naïve country youth that yearns for an identity in a manic, unforgiving urban climate is a longstanding and well-worn literary tradition. Newell, whose main asset is his appearance, has no larger ambition other than to hold a job, make next month's rent, and engage in carnal pleasures. Instead of making his protagonist as more enticing, complex figure, Grimsley gets sidetracked by his own creative gymnastic pretensions: a historical second-hand account of a slaveholder's homicidal cruelty, and detailing the thoughts of a transvestite cleaning lady who is run ragged by alcohol, loneliness and dotage. What reader really needs to be reminded that New Orleans is a city with history, or that society includes people other than young, vain twenty-something waifs? Jim Grimsley is talented enough to make a mundane trip to the corner market seem more than ordinary. And he proves that here. One can only hope that his next volume will recapture the spark of individual passion lacking in "Boulevard" and its inhabitants.
Rating: 
Summary: also disappointed
Review: trite coming of age rehash with nary a character that anyone could care about. not his best work by far
Rating:
Summary: Great read, more for entertainment than anything else.
Review: Was Jim Grimsley half-asleep when he wrote this novel? His fiction is usually powerful and moving, and I love his work, but Boulevard is a depiction of characters we don't care about in a plot that goes nowhere, but, thankfully ends eventually. A supreme disappointment. Read anything by him but this half-hearted effort.
Rating:
Summary: Great Writer, Incredibly Weak Book
Review: Was Jim Grimsley half-asleep when he wrote this novel? His fiction is usually powerful and moving, and I love his work, but Boulevard is a depiction of characters we don't care about in a plot that goes nowhere, but, thankfully ends eventually. A supreme disappointment. Read anything by him but this half-hearted effort.
Rating:
Summary: "Boulevard" Not the Smoothest Ride
Review: While the book starts off fairly promising, it becomes hard to follow with later chapters taking the points of view of other characters that aren't nearly as interesting as Newell. I find myself not remembering many parts of the book shortly after reading it - including the ending.
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