cover image GODSPEED

GODSPEED

Lynn Breedlove, . . St. Martin's, $23.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-312-28680-4

This free-wheeling, fast-paced drug odyssey—the speed-addled San Francisco doppelgänger of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting—features a butch female bike messenger named Jim, an all-girl punk band and the never-ending search for the rush that makes it all worthwhile. Jim's hardcore speed habit means she's headed nowhere fast; when forced to choose between drugs and the girl she loves, disaster and a cross-country road trip follow. Along the way, the reader is treated to a vivid portrait of a life in collapse, as well as poetic and seductive descriptions of the highs preceding this downfall. Jim's relationship with her stripper girlfriend, Ally, provides the story's emotional center and the arc of the protagonist's development. Amid a tornado of activity and attitude, the author builds a small oasis of honest and unvarnished emotion, constructing a touching and nuanced portrait of a "boy" who has not quite grown up. Jim rides fast and lives hard, yet somehow, beneath all the bravado and the crude drama, she retains an almost childlike innocence and purity of heart that radiates through the accumulated layers of grime and vice, carrying the reader through her darkest hours. The narrative can be gratingly autobiographical in tone at times, and the rushed, free-form style is occasionally a bit gimmicky, but this earnest debut is well worth the ride. (May)

Forecast:Breedlove, chief singer and songwriter for the popular dyke-punk band Tribe 8, has a following already, and West Coast fans in particular (Tribe 8 is based in San Francisco) will be the sustaining readership for her debut novel.