Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band: A Love Story- with Rock 'n' Roll

by Enrico Brizzi, Stash Luczkiw (Translator)

Overview

Alex D. is on the verge of just about everything and consumed by a restless, unanswered longing that rebels against jumping through the hoops of school. Staring down the tunnel to a mundane adulthood, he is appalled by the banality and overwhelming predictability of it all: teachers, parents, and above all his classmates - the seething masses of dutiful zombies and sistren of the Evervirgin Sorority. A bicycle bandit with a DeNiro smile, Alex sports a homemade buzzcut, ditches school to drink and trade stories with his posse of delinquents and rogues, and chases away the blues by assailing his eardrums with the Clash. He shares a brief friendship with the privileged, semi-degenerate Martino, who seems to have mastered the devil-may-care stance Alex covets - until he's busted for drugs. And then comes the sudden entrance of Aidi, who seems to instantly understand, complement, and challenge him. A hundred letters and conversations later, she is magnificent, amazing, irreplaceable ... and leaving for a year in America at the end of the summer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802135216
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/10/1997
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.25(h) x (d)

What People are Saying About This

Pagan Kennedy

Reading this book is like stage—diving into a mosh pit—you'll be bumped, mangled, held aloft, and carried away.

Editorial Reviews

Haphazardly punctuated first novel of middle-class Europeen angst that's less about rock 'n' roll, or pubescent love, than about Anglo-American slacker culture and a bunch of dead-end kids who talk the talk and walk the walk because they have nothing better to do.

The story, set in Bologna, veers between impressionistic accounts of 16-year-old Alex's search for love, thrills, and a purpose in life, and transcripts of his annoyingly affected tape-recorded diary. Alex is, of course, alienated from his family, who apparently do nothing but watch television, eat, and drive Alex wherever he can't take himself on his bicycle—this last a relic of his childhood that comes to symbolize his quest for enduring values. When not flying through Bolognese streets on the bike and thinking of himself in rock bands, or as Holden Caulfield, Alex plays the rebel without a clue: sleeping late, scowling menacingly at girls, drinking too much, and nearly failing what few high school classes he doesn't cut. He suffers a brief friendship with Martino—an upper-middle-class teenage nihilist who has all the right clothes and rock 'n' roll posters, and enough money from his divorced parents to spend most of his life intoxicated—that ends when Martino is arrested and commits suicide. The tale's only variation from earlier interpretations of the coming-of-age formula is revealed in Alex's inability to have sexual feelings for Adelaide, who raises him from his gloom like a Beatrice to Dante. Alas, Aidi departs for a year of foreign study in America. Alex tenderly gives her his security blanket as a keepsake and zooms tearfully away on his bike.

Numerous '90s pop-culture references (the title refers to a guitarist who abruptly quit the Red Hot Chili Peppers) and insouciance that begins to grate. A big seller in Italy, we're told.

Kirkus Reviews