From: syderange@aol.com (Syderange)
Newsgroups: alt.books.reviews
Subject: BOOK REVIEW - Garden State
Date: 22 Mar 1995 20:02:37 -0500

Garden State

by
Rick Moody

Published by Pushcart Press 1993

"I wear black on the outside because that's the way I feel on the inside"
so sings Morrisey, the eternal nihilist, providing the ambiance for Rick
Moody's brooding first novel.  In  Garden State, a young troubled
guitarist Alice is set adrift on the poisonous soul killing streets of a
small New Jersey town.  Alice is just one of an ensemble cast of tragic
characters who have fallen prey to cancer of the soul in the toxic
industrial wastelands of the Garden State.

Like a muddy stream flowing through a junk yard, Alice and her friends
Lane, Ruthie and Dennis try to find a way to escape the inevitable end in
the Hudson, the river that separates their hellish Jersey existence from
the fantasy life of the tragically hip New York teens.  Their nights are
spent glomming down booze and whatever chemicals come their way, days are
spent trying to avoid the real world rut run by so many of their peers.

Moody's vision of middle class suburbia is a scorched, desolate place
where no one can ever connect with another and just the attempt causes
karmic disaster.  Although his characters remain simple sketches, this
lack of depth and development is just another symptom of the deevolution
of the body and spirit caused by simple dioxin days living in Cancer
Alley.

Copyright 1995 David M. Glitzer