The Nostalgia Echo

by Mickey Hess

Fiction. "THE NOSTALGIA ECHO is the best book you will read this year, or any the exact antidote to all those tired, humorless, beige-colored novels of recent memory, the writing here pops with both a dazzling intelligence and a devastating depth of character. Mr. Hess carries on in the great tradition of Vonnegut, D. Barthelme, and every other genius literary madman."—Joe Meno

331 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Martin Ott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Nostalgia Echo by Mickey Hess, the first novel from C&R Press, is a book with many layers. It follows the storyline of a professional narrator named Gene in search of his birth mother, armed only with a Polaroid photograph of her at a book signing for Doctor Everett Barnes, a nostalgia expert who is at the center of the novel and its subplots.

The Nostalgia Echo is reminiscent of Paul Auster’s City of Glass in that the quest is not the actual quest, but rather the exploration of what is real and what is not from the perspective of an unreliable narrator: “I like to pretend I’m an objective reporter of whatever story I’m telling, but when I get bored and cranky I tend to make things up.” More: http://writeliving.wordpress.com/2012...

[Beth Yeary · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was an extremely s-l-o-w start. Extremely wordy, and not really covering too much, other then stroking the narrator's ego. Somewhere in the second half of the book, it started to get interesting, the story ended. Goodreads did enable me to read this one.

[Jamie Iredell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this hyperbolic look at a world obsessed with a now-happening look past. Pure satire in Twainian way.