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Caveworld
Adam Gnade's second novel, Caveworld, is a howl of desperation as its characters fight to find love and meaning in a society with which they feel out of step. Richly encyclopedic and set in the twin border towns of Tijuana and San Diego, the book tells two love stories separated by a gulf of twenty years. Caveworld is made up of the various events (both subtle and seismic) that change lives in an instant.
Gnade covers a lot of ground: sex and pervasive loneliness in teenage bedrooms, life-shaping horror in the Vietnam jungle, birth, school, work, marriage, depression, crime, murder, mood-flushed road trips crossing the continent, exile (whether on Mexican rooftop or country estate), and living rooms smoky with the sad and oft-times devastating absurdity of "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll." Equally influenced by Joan Didion's West Coast storytelling, Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, and James Joyce's early examinations of place, Gnade's Caveworld is an epic, sprawling saga of American life.
Gnade covers a lot of ground: sex and pervasive loneliness in teenage bedrooms, life-shaping horror in the Vietnam jungle, birth, school, work, marriage, depression, crime, murder, mood-flushed road trips crossing the continent, exile (whether on Mexican rooftop or country estate), and living rooms smoky with the sad and oft-times devastating absurdity of "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll." Equally influenced by Joan Didion's West Coast storytelling, Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, and James Joyce's early examinations of place, Gnade's Caveworld is an epic, sprawling saga of American life.
- GenresFiction
336 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2013
5 people are currently reading
139 people want to read
About the author
Adam Gnade
23 books146 followersAdam Gnade’s (guh nah dee) work is released as a series of books and "talking songs" that share characters and themes; the fiction writing continuing plot-lines left open by the self-described “talking songs” in an attempt to compile a vast, detailed, interconnected, personal history of contemporary American life. His books and "talking records" are released by Bread & Roses Press and Three One G.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 11, 2015
I read this for my book group in March 2015. It's a sprawling tale which interchanges between two separate storylines, one set in the late 1970s/early 1980s and the other in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Pondering the extent to which they might connect was intriguing.
The writing is great - echoes of Brett Easton Ellis and Doug Coupland (both big plusses for me) - with convincingly flawed, interesting and memorable characters. Occasional moments of high drama intersperse with day-to-day ephemera, and the inner lives of some of the key characters are skilfully explored through a varied range of techniques.
That said, my overriding emotion on finishing the book was relief. By the halfway point it was starting to outstay its welcome and become quite repetitive. One of the two storylines has seemingly endless, and rather wearing, descriptions of excess drinking and drugging, many during regular trips to Tijuana. Reining in some of these scenes, and the associated brooding over relationships, life's meaning etc., would have made for a better book.
3/5
The writing is great - echoes of Brett Easton Ellis and Doug Coupland (both big plusses for me) - with convincingly flawed, interesting and memorable characters. Occasional moments of high drama intersperse with day-to-day ephemera, and the inner lives of some of the key characters are skilfully explored through a varied range of techniques.
That said, my overriding emotion on finishing the book was relief. By the halfway point it was starting to outstay its welcome and become quite repetitive. One of the two storylines has seemingly endless, and rather wearing, descriptions of excess drinking and drugging, many during regular trips to Tijuana. Reining in some of these scenes, and the associated brooding over relationships, life's meaning etc., would have made for a better book.
3/5
February 18, 2023
Terrific! Gnade's deft handling of states of consciousness, anxiety and concern, pain beyond reckoning, pop-cultural references including the embarrassing and difficult to thread into "serious" fiction, is a wonder to behold and a sight to see. You. Will. Experience. This. Novel. It's one to press onto friends, even if it doesn't taking much "pushing": once you read the four-page prologue, as I did, you'll find it unputdownable. So many times, "stream of consciousness" efforts seem to make a trade off between everyday life and some would-be, aped-Buddhist thought; what do you do, if you're life's full of Slurpees and burritos? Getting this right is something that takes everything to achieve, but it's handed to you here like it's effortless.
A milestone. What Kerouac's On the Road must've felt like to people receptive to its message when it was first published, and, odder still, a book that feels long overdue — which is, itself, part of Gnade's project (hence the straddling of two timelines-flashbacked narrative). Sometimes you gotta do double shifts, for eras not fully lived through: what the early 90s lacked and the early 2000s didn't know it didn't have "sewed up," is the looking-glass you'll be peering through, here.
And it goes on, with more to come! I like it, I like it.
A milestone. What Kerouac's On the Road must've felt like to people receptive to its message when it was first published, and, odder still, a book that feels long overdue — which is, itself, part of Gnade's project (hence the straddling of two timelines-flashbacked narrative). Sometimes you gotta do double shifts, for eras not fully lived through: what the early 90s lacked and the early 2000s didn't know it didn't have "sewed up," is the looking-glass you'll be peering through, here.
And it goes on, with more to come! I like it, I like it.
February 17, 2023
Told in alternating timelines in the 80s and the 2000s, both stories tell of young adults finding their way through life, navigating drugs, girls, friends, children, food, and travel. Told in a stream of consciousness style that reminded me of Kerouac, especially when there would be these long descriptions of everything on the dinner table. I would say that this is mostly a story about friendship, and the way we interact with said friends, how we embrace and how we gamble friendships, and how sometimes you need a friend to help you continue on. As another reviewer said this makes me want to be young again.
January 9, 2023
Somewhat of a coming of age novel, written in a lot of fun techniques but mainly stream of consciousness. 2 dudes trying to find meaning in life by way of drinking, partying, women, food and pop culture. Makes me long to be 20 again with not a single clue of how life works yet at the same time very very grateful that I am not 20 years old with not a single clue of how life works. Probably could have been 50 pages less but overall fun and stoked to have found Adam Gnade in 2022
July 16, 2014
I’ll try to make this quick but I know that it won’t be.
I woke up to an email this morning reminding me of Christmas Day this past year, which was a day, that for the most part, wasn’t fun. I sat huddled, fully dressed under large blankets with my cat on my lap, trying my best to not think about the past where I’d spent the entire day with my family, stumbling around in matching pajamas by a fire. In the very real reality, it was minus -30, the power had been off for days at this point, and I was reading Caveworld.
Adam Gnade’s follow up to Hymn California (which is pretty magnificent as well) is a crawling beast, taking readers from a particular corner of America outwards and beyond borders in the literal, but primarily in the figurative sense.
From a structural point of view, and speaking mostly technically, the book is just a lot of fun to read. With interwoven stories and a web-like connection of interpersonal interactions and developments, it’s an example of one of those great ones that reminds you why TV or a movie will never quite be able to accomplish what a good novel can—feeling those connections between characters and the world in a way just looking at them rarely inspires. I hate comparing someone’s work across time, but (I have to, even if partially to respond to a past review of Hymn California by a person who clearly doesn’t get it), but as a novelist, in this book Gnade really flexes in the classical sense, clicking together prose that’s clever and fluid and fun, and at the same time bone dour and sobering and draping it over a solid plot skeleton. There’s love, there’s fear, and lots of other good stuff but those are the most important.
There’s a lot to talk about in terms of themes and the feels of this title, and without a copy next to me as I’m punching this into my stupid phone, I’m remiss to try and explain it to you completely—what I can say, is that in my pretty extensive experience of reading I’ve yet to come across a title that makes you remember what it’s like to feel young and both completely prepared and unprepared at the same time. Sections of this book make me remember what it’s like to fall in love in a freewheeling, terrifying way, with a person and with the world and with your own life, even if on the surface it’s not the one you think you should love. The word I see most in conjunction with Caveworld is ‘expansive’ and while it’s definitely that, I also found it to be insulating and brought me back to the elements of my community, my basement show and ripped jeans subculture, the laughing danger of an out of control house party, all that stuff that makes you remember what it felt like to grow up, and at once keeping you grounded in the fact that you and everything else may not realize it when you get there, if you do. This novel made me want to call my friends.
Whew. Am I selling it? I’m not trying to sell it, I guess I’m just trying to explain. Why bother explaining all that stuff about the weather? At the time, I thought I loved this book, at least in part because reading I felt drenched in California sun and street noises and food (the descriptions of food in this book are amazing, enough to make you want to sink all your savings into a food truck and create the menu in chronological order) , and I think that’s definitely a factor, but not the only thing. The real reason I love this book is because it’s so good that it captures the complexities and innate beauty of life and does it through a lens that anyone between the ages of fifteen and fifty can’t help but relate to, and that sitting there, despite freezing my ass off to all fuck on Christmas day in the dark, it made me smile and whoop out loud.
Just don’t be silly and go read this book. I mailed a copy to a friend a few days ago. I’ve ordered a few from the great people at Pioneers Press (who you should support in any way possible) to give to people I care about. I keep a copy of this book in my car because when it comes time for me to run away, or go for a long drive to nowhere in particular I want to make sure I have it with me. When something becomes part of your emergency bag, I don’t know what else you can say about it.
I woke up to an email this morning reminding me of Christmas Day this past year, which was a day, that for the most part, wasn’t fun. I sat huddled, fully dressed under large blankets with my cat on my lap, trying my best to not think about the past where I’d spent the entire day with my family, stumbling around in matching pajamas by a fire. In the very real reality, it was minus -30, the power had been off for days at this point, and I was reading Caveworld.
Adam Gnade’s follow up to Hymn California (which is pretty magnificent as well) is a crawling beast, taking readers from a particular corner of America outwards and beyond borders in the literal, but primarily in the figurative sense.
From a structural point of view, and speaking mostly technically, the book is just a lot of fun to read. With interwoven stories and a web-like connection of interpersonal interactions and developments, it’s an example of one of those great ones that reminds you why TV or a movie will never quite be able to accomplish what a good novel can—feeling those connections between characters and the world in a way just looking at them rarely inspires. I hate comparing someone’s work across time, but (I have to, even if partially to respond to a past review of Hymn California by a person who clearly doesn’t get it), but as a novelist, in this book Gnade really flexes in the classical sense, clicking together prose that’s clever and fluid and fun, and at the same time bone dour and sobering and draping it over a solid plot skeleton. There’s love, there’s fear, and lots of other good stuff but those are the most important.
There’s a lot to talk about in terms of themes and the feels of this title, and without a copy next to me as I’m punching this into my stupid phone, I’m remiss to try and explain it to you completely—what I can say, is that in my pretty extensive experience of reading I’ve yet to come across a title that makes you remember what it’s like to feel young and both completely prepared and unprepared at the same time. Sections of this book make me remember what it’s like to fall in love in a freewheeling, terrifying way, with a person and with the world and with your own life, even if on the surface it’s not the one you think you should love. The word I see most in conjunction with Caveworld is ‘expansive’ and while it’s definitely that, I also found it to be insulating and brought me back to the elements of my community, my basement show and ripped jeans subculture, the laughing danger of an out of control house party, all that stuff that makes you remember what it felt like to grow up, and at once keeping you grounded in the fact that you and everything else may not realize it when you get there, if you do. This novel made me want to call my friends.
Whew. Am I selling it? I’m not trying to sell it, I guess I’m just trying to explain. Why bother explaining all that stuff about the weather? At the time, I thought I loved this book, at least in part because reading I felt drenched in California sun and street noises and food (the descriptions of food in this book are amazing, enough to make you want to sink all your savings into a food truck and create the menu in chronological order) , and I think that’s definitely a factor, but not the only thing. The real reason I love this book is because it’s so good that it captures the complexities and innate beauty of life and does it through a lens that anyone between the ages of fifteen and fifty can’t help but relate to, and that sitting there, despite freezing my ass off to all fuck on Christmas day in the dark, it made me smile and whoop out loud.
Just don’t be silly and go read this book. I mailed a copy to a friend a few days ago. I’ve ordered a few from the great people at Pioneers Press (who you should support in any way possible) to give to people I care about. I keep a copy of this book in my car because when it comes time for me to run away, or go for a long drive to nowhere in particular I want to make sure I have it with me. When something becomes part of your emergency bag, I don’t know what else you can say about it.
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January 15, 2022I've yet to read or find a copy of Hymn, California, but having just read Caveworld and the short novella, Locust House, Gnade is truly crafting his own world for his work to live in.
Caveworld is dense and sprawling with a lot to take and more to give back. A lust-letter to San Diego, Tijuana and middle America (and drugs and love and friends and finding yourself and losing yourself). An easy comparison to On The Road, but Caveworld is more inviting (to me, at least).
Two story lines for one story that will hopefully be endless and continued in his next work.
Caveworld is dense and sprawling with a lot to take and more to give back. A lust-letter to San Diego, Tijuana and middle America (and drugs and love and friends and finding yourself and losing yourself). An easy comparison to On The Road, but Caveworld is more inviting (to me, at least).
Two story lines for one story that will hopefully be endless and continued in his next work.
July 31, 2025
The absolute definition of all vibes no plot. As a San Diego native I enjoyed reading about characters in a familiar setting but wow that was 400+ pages of saying basically nothing that advanced the characters, their relationships, their experience. I think it would have benefitted from any inclination of a story arc for anyone.
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