Rock n Roll Suicide Book

It's every fan's dream come true: to have your idol turn up at your doorstep looking to hide away from the eyes of the media. PP Hartnett's Rock 'n' Roll Suicide presents such a fantasy with aplomb, and a dark twist. Max is a megastar, a handsome, yet deeply unhappy rock singer who has been elevated by fame to a status that he's uncomfortable with. He's become a product of the music industry and cannot identify with his real self--Joep van Lieshout. This inner-turmoil leads him to make plans to end his young life. Having played his last gig, 19-year-old Max vanishes without telling his record company and embarks on a strange journey to meet a handful of his fans. He eventually finds Angela--a plump, but pretty-faced magazine writer, and one of Max's greatest fans. Between them, they have more than enough emotional and psychological issues to fill a textbook, but this unlikely pairing seems to work, at first. He gains a sense of reality and of being grounded and she gains a sense of purpose by having someone other than her cat Minty to fuss over. In the end, despite the hospitality Angela shows Max, he is unable to return the favour, maybe as a result of his youthful inexperience or a remnant of his selfish public persona. Hartnett has obviously done his research, (see the expansive "acknowledgements" section) and has presented an interestingly dark angle on an age-old fantasy. He deals with notions of modern malaise insightfully: Max is depicted as a deeply intense, overtly unstable character with brooding sexual undertones in comparison to the girl-next-door, covertly unstable Angela. Although from different parts of the spectrum, underneath it all they are unified by the same morose feelings and desperate loneliness. --Angela BoodooRead More