Till the Wheels Fall Off

Zellar (House of Coats) spins a thoughtful meditation on the intersections of analog and digital as a 20-something man explores his family history and decaying Midwestern hometown in 1999. After high school, Matthew Carnap works for his uncles on the “Rubber Route,” which involves servicing condom machines in the region’s bars and truck stops. A briefly successful attempt to strike out on his own lands him a music writer job for an alt weekly in Minneapolis, though he grows tired of the scene’s derivative music and his own derivative writing, and nostalgic for records by the region’s classic rock and funk performers introduced to him by his stepfather Russ in the mid-’80s, back when Russ was married to his mother and running a roller rink in Matthew’s hometown of Prentice. It’s the memories of Russ, in part, that draw him back to Prentice, hoping to reconnect with Russ. Matthew also offers a glimpse of living with attention deficit disorder (“You can’t focus on any one thing, so you’re bored and frustrated all the time”). Though a dearth of dramatic scenes makes for slow going, Zellar’s lyrical descriptions of music and roller-skating are consistently effective. This affectionate and endearing trip down memory lane is sure to resonate with readers. (July)