SYNOPSIS: (From the inside jacket): “Why am I a punk? Because I wasn’t anything before, except different. And now it’s like I’m different, but with a vengeance.”

It’s been months since the suicide of Darby Crash, L.A. punk rock icon and lead singer of the Germs. He checked out on the same day John Lennon was shot: December 8, 1980. But for Rockets Redglare, it feels like yesterday. Darby was the hot-as-sun center of Rockets’ world. Part ringleader, part god, and all charismatic manipulator, Darby was as close to family as a hustler and street kid like Rockets might ever get.

Now, as Rockets amps up for another night looking for tricks and scrounging a meal, Sex Pistols and X lyrics on repeat in his head, he knows he’s come to a turning point–the scene is changing, and nothing’s as easy as it was when Darby brought him into the fold.  From the underground clubs to the back of the giant “H” in the Hollywood sign, Rockets and his crew of friends spend the night burning bridges, building new ones, tripping and talking and searching for answers. As the dark gives way to early morning, the punks and the cops engage in their ritual standoff–and Rockets faces the ultimate choice: Should he stay or should he go?

EDITORIAL REVIEW: This is supposed to be about Darby Crash," Rockets tells us at the outset, but most of the secrets the homeless, 13-year-old street kid shares are not about the leader of the formative L.A. punk band the Germs but about himself, instead. In his jittery, oddly addictive, street-smart, pun-spurting, stream-of-consciousness style, he tells us about a single night in the life two months after his sometime lover, Darby, has committed suicide. The beautifully realized setting of this semiautobiographical novel is Hollywood in 1980, when punk has captured the attention and imagination of a crazy coterie of Southern California kids. But punk, Rockets explains, isn't a style; it's a way of life that, in his case, is lived on "home street home." And, for an abandoned-at-birth child of drug addicts, it's an identity. After all, Rockets was one of Darby's boys. But who is he now, and, if he survives this drug-riddled night of hustling, narrow escapes, frenetic music, and death, who might he become? And where will he find love? Like his first novel, War Boy (2000), Hilsbery's second is a hauntingly up-close-and--personal look at the hellish life of a troubled, baffled, different kind of kid for whom many readers will come to care enormously.  Editorial review by Michael Cart.

Our review?  Why doesn't someone make a movie out of this book!  It would be a top seller, for sure.

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FORMAT: Paperback, 368 pages

VIEW MULTIMEDIA: NO MULTIMEDIA  AVAILABLE

PUBLISHER: Villard.
AVAILABILITY: In stock! Ships within one business day.
LANGUAGE: English.
VIEWER DISCRETION: Coarse language, sexual dialog.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA (2005).
DATE ADDED TO OUR LIBRARY:  July 18, 2008.
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