Mayflies in July

Rating:
Summary: Written from the Heart
Review: Not to be confused with the "Babylon 5" actor, Joshua Cox is a writer of the Hemingway self-excommunicated variety, a Euro-wanderer whose prose is a cross between Russian lit and Rolling Stone fiction.
Others who have read this book have commented that it's a page-turner; that's because it has the key element for the success of a new writer--it is written from the heart. Along the lines of Christopher Reeves' movie "Somewhere In Time," this book has that same romantic tone, but it is a Mackinaw Island love story told from the perspective of the Douglas Coupland Generation, or perhaps an Eggers Generation that is emerging post-2000. This new generation of writers is a Phoenix from the ashes of the historical Romanticism from the Beats to Gen X and it's becoming a hodgepodge of underground indy literature, e-published books on Barnes-and-Noble banned Xlibris Press, small houses like Empyreal Press out of Montreal, and McSweeney-style Americanized reestablishing of the OuLiPo avant garde. The benefit is a broader range of books, more choices, more voices. Incredible first novels like Patrick Borden's "The Space" and Joshua Cox's "Mayflies in July" are thankfully available to the public, even if conglomerate megastore booksellers don't greet them with open arms.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel for two main reasons: 1) it had the heart of a true indy movie and 2) it gives a voyeuristic revealment of love in the unguarded style of Cameron Crowe. Cox, along with up-and-comers like Borden, JT LeRoy, Peter Henry, Jett McAlister, Matt Deming, and Kirk P. Hansen are a new quiet wave of writers that Internet surfers should welcome.