Right Away Monday
Reviewed by Steven W. BeattieQuill & Quire, July 2007
Clayton Reid, the booze-besotted, drug-addicted ne’er-do-well at the centre of Joel Thomas Hynes’s second novel, bears a striking resemblance to Keith Kavanagh, the shiftless antihero of Down to the Dirt, Hynes’s 2004 debut. Both are selfish, self-destructive young men who use alcohol, drugs, and casual sex as a means of keeping the harshness of the world at bay, and both find their lives of reckless excess called into question by the appearance of a strong woman.
For Clayton, that woman is Isadora, a would-be actress who he feels could be “that someone who’s out there somewhere who’s gonna make it through with me and point me heart in the right direction, rid me of this coldbloodedness I cant seem to shake no more.” But like Keith, who makes a cameo appearance in the new novel, Clayton is unable to face up to his responsibilities, preferring instead the oblivion found at the bottom of a bottle [...]
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The unabridged audio edition of Down to the Dirt by Joel Hynes, narrated by Joel Thomas Hynes, Sherry White and Jonny Harris is available here from rattlingbooks.com
