cover image Over Under Sideways Down

Over Under Sideways Down

Gordon Skene. Malvern Publishing Company, $24.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-947993-79-5

From within a life-threatening coma, a middle-aged man delves into the mystery of what he has become, returning mentally to the California of the 1960s and '70s, in this appealing debut novel. Just after his first big break as a pianist, Nelson Rivers is hit by an L.A. bus and hospitalized. Trapped inside an unresponsive body, he is intermittently aware of loved ones around him and their attempts to get through to him. Even his dead friend Buzz appears, albeit not corporeally. Nelson's visitors play his favorite music or try to make conversation as Nelson drifts back in time to 1964, to the awkward adolescence in which he first meets Buzz and Burgie in L.A. By 1968, Burgie is driving a Volkswagen van, and the boys--along with female friends Jeannie, Stoika and Leslie--find themselves in psychedelic San Francisco. Nelson's mind tracks forward through romantic misadventures and other struggles. The group scatters and sporadically reunites over the years, all the while retaining an unspoken bond. Now they are gathered again as Nelson's wife, Audrey, faces the prospect of turning off her husband's life support. Skene explores themes of love and friendship, and unravels the tangled thread of personal history as he perceptively captures the innocence of even the wildest of times past. The triumphs and tribulations shared by these affectingly real characters, traced through the decades in an engaging, colorful narrative, provide moments of poignancy and insight in this warm-hearted first novel. (July)