A review by alexhouston
Someone Should Pay for Your Pain by Franz Nicolay

5.0

Taking the mid-life crisis of an early-aughts indie rock never-was as his starting point, Franz Nicolay delivers a tight-fisted gut punch of a novel, weaving a road-weary world with a lyricist's skill for evocation, emotion, and economy at once. A solo-acoustic requiem for the un-glamor of every minor scene that briefly felt enormous, and an unflinching and finely rendered vision of old anthems clashing with new ideals, Someone Should Pay for Your Pain is a story of an xennial reckoning unto redemption, which fans of Nicolay's band, The Hold Steady, will appreciate, and which will leave anyone who reads it brimming with ragged hope. A knock-out fiction debut from a long-time troubadour.