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samarov's review
reviewed in Maudlin House
The rise and fall of the Alphanumeric Murders is detailed in a note-perfect oral history voiced by the titular ex-members of the band. Carroll clearly knows the world of small insular music scenes inside out and is tuned into how tiny fissures can lead to fatal fractures within them. The ups and downs of a band depend so much on maintaining a delicate chemistry and any change in the PH is liable to throw off the whole formula. While they’re not quite Spinal Tap, the Alphanumerics’ revolving-door membership is equal parts comedy and melodrama.
The rise and fall of the Alphanumeric Murders is detailed in a note-perfect oral history voiced by the titular ex-members of the band. Carroll clearly knows the world of small insular music scenes inside out and is tuned into how tiny fissures can lead to fatal fractures within them. The ups and downs of a band depend so much on maintaining a delicate chemistry and any change in the PH is liable to throw off the whole formula. While they’re not quite Spinal Tap, the Alphanumerics’ revolving-door membership is equal parts comedy and melodrama.
Like the unfinished tower, the band is a vessel to carry the hopes and dreams of all who come in contact with it. This includes fans, exes, recording engineers, and even possibly imaginary online personalities. No matter what character, decade, or format, each chapter concerns the ways in which a passion——be it for esoteric field recording, board game design, or small town civic planning——can both lend meaning and destroy those devoted to it.
A favorite band, hobby, or person can become the focal point of a person’s life such that they themselves disappear. They live to serve what they love but their love can also curdle or consume them. While most everyone in the book is connected, their primary connection is to their own private vision. They each believe they’re on the inside, even as they often can’t see past their own noses. We’re all this way more or less: in love with our idea of love, forgetting what it was that got us so worked up in the first place, then realizing too late that our lives have flown past without our notice.
In the end, the long-unfinished hotel tower becomes a thriving hotel, but is it still a fulfillment of its town’s dreams? Carroll wisely leaves it up to the reader to decide. The answer will depend on what role childhood ambition, nostalgia, faith, friendship, and obsession play in your life. A “perpetual almost”, as Carroll calls it at one point.
And you thought it was just that eyesore in the middle of your home town.
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