A REVIEW OF SLANTED AND DISENCHANTED BY LISA CZARINA MICHAUD

REVIEWED BY KARL WENCLAS

We were going on tour even if we were wildly unprepared. We didn’t have a bassist to blame. We didn’t have CDs to sell. My girlfriend was pissed. And Tony, who took up more personal space than any of us, had to come along and babysit. But off we went for ten days in a rusty sky-blue Chevy van that looked like it kidnapped children.

Rock n’ roll.

In this highly readable novel, Pete and Carol are two twenty year-old would-be rock musicians who attended the same high school and keep running into each other. Curiosity begins between them as they realize their common interest. One problem: Pete is committed to his girlfriend, Allison. Complications ensue.

What struck me most about Slanted and Disenchanted while reading it, is its rock world reality. I’ve read multiple histories and biographies about rock bands– recently, on R.E.M. and Dire Straits. The most interesting part of such narratives invariably is about the band’s origins. Finding one another, and finding a way to start making music. In most books, though, every eventful moment is described from the outside, or retrospectively with little sense of immediacy. A band’s first concert might be covered in a paragraph, or a page. This novel goes behind the scenes, so to speak. Inside the minds and deep within the complicated personalities of the artists themselves. Including showing inevitable disputes and miscommunications. As well as backstories.

One of the characters was accepted at Juilliard: “I guess what I was always looking for was a more organic, less competitive approach to making music and didn’t want to end the four years hating jazz. . .” (Which could apply to any art.)

It’s the kind of leisurely written novel which sneaks up on the reader. A key scene occurs about seventy pages in and you go, “Whoa!” A moment. Moments are what art is about. Throughout the novel Michaud uses a double viewpoint technique, switching back-and-forth between the perspectives of the two characters, which adds a sense of roundedness; a touch of three-dimensionality. How will their dilemmas be resolved? What happens when they get their project on the road? Surprises abound.

Youthful grasping at love, the pursuit of self-knowledge, and insights about music and the creation of art make Slanted and Disenchanted a worthwhile read.

(Information on Lisa Czarina Michaud and how to order Slanted and Disenchanted is available here.)