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A review by screamdogreads
How to be Nowhere by Tim MacGabhann
"Missing you is shit, I managed to say, and I think he was about to say something else when the bullet-holes on his chest began to widen, his outline began to waver, and then he was gone, leaving me alone in a night that smelled of burning thorn-bush and mesquite. "
How to be Nowhere takes the foundation that Call him Mine laid down, injects it with steroids, douses it with gasoline and throws a lit match upon it. It's entirely ramped the hell up, to perhaps even overkill levels, yet never for a moment is it unenjoyable. It's a difficult yet beautiful and poetic read, an absolute festival of violence and death. A real horrific offering, a blood-drenched sequel we didn't know we needed, overflowing with explosions, car crashes, torture and brutality. Once again, the writing is paramount, taking center stage above the carnage.
Sometimes, from the very first page of a book, you can tell that it's going to devastate you, that it's going to utterly ruin you. That's the exact feeling you get when beginning to read How to be Nowhere, a feeling that it delivers on with a shocking rapidness. Typically, a sequel is out-shined by its predecessor, here that's entirely not the case. How to be Nowhere is every bit as brilliant, if not more so than Call him Mine. Tim MacGabhann's writing is gorgeous, it's haunting, it's heart-wrenching and makes you feel as if the only option is to fling yourself upon the blacktop and let passing traffic squish you.
How to be Nowhere takes the foundation that Call him Mine laid down, injects it with steroids, douses it with gasoline and throws a lit match upon it. It's entirely ramped the hell up, to perhaps even overkill levels, yet never for a moment is it unenjoyable. It's a difficult yet beautiful and poetic read, an absolute festival of violence and death. A real horrific offering, a blood-drenched sequel we didn't know we needed, overflowing with explosions, car crashes, torture and brutality. Once again, the writing is paramount, taking center stage above the carnage.
Sometimes, from the very first page of a book, you can tell that it's going to devastate you, that it's going to utterly ruin you. That's the exact feeling you get when beginning to read How to be Nowhere, a feeling that it delivers on with a shocking rapidness. Typically, a sequel is out-shined by its predecessor, here that's entirely not the case. How to be Nowhere is every bit as brilliant, if not more so than Call him Mine. Tim MacGabhann's writing is gorgeous, it's haunting, it's heart-wrenching and makes you feel as if the only option is to fling yourself upon the blacktop and let passing traffic squish you.
"I wanted to tell her about him. I wanted to tell her that you can't recover from a thing like the one he'd been through - or like the things I'd been through - because you can't even try, you just shunt yourself onwards, lessened, punctured, quietly a wreck. On the outside, it looks a lot like peace. Really, though, it's just devastation."
Plunging back into this terrifying, white-knuckle, drug fueled world was a fucking joy. Violence, gore, viscera and entrails are flung about and woven together into a somehow lovely story. It's difficult to even describe the particular feeling this novel brings about, it's charged by destruction and savagery, but it's all really rather bleak and upsetting, despite the action it's an overwhelmingly sad novel. Instead of being the kind of novel you can switch your brain off to, How to be Nowhere is obliterating to the soul, numbing the pain with it's disgusting barbarity, only to stab you in the gut once more. It may be over the top, it may be insane, but it works so very marvelously. It's absolutely riveting, and not at all for the feint of heart.
"His vibe was different from before, stand-offish, cold, like those white marble statues of Ancient Greece, of Orpheus or Eurydice or someone, I don't know. 'It'll kill you. But gently, you know?' The fizz spritzed my face like drizzle. 'It could all be over if you just let yourself drown, vato' Carlos said. His voice was gentle, his fingers were broken, and his eyes were pinkish with petechial hemorrhaging."