Straight Through the Night

Edward Allen. Soho Press, $9.95 (270pp) ISBN 978-0-939149-36-0

This first novel offers a graphic guided tour of the meat-packing and -selling industry from the down-and-out perspective of an ex-preppie, ex-student activist. ``Allen has a good ear for raunchy working-class vernacular, but he squanders his obvious literary talents on endless self-rumination, leaving little room for full-bodied characters to emerge,'' maintained PW. (June)

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